Harry Potter & the Naked Lunch For Two
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: When the Boy Who Lived has a Naked Lunch, there's a Ministry Mutiny, Albus has a Dummydore, Sirius goes Thru the Looking Glass & General Granger is reporting for duty, who ya gonna call? Snape, of course! HG/SS AUish Yr 7 NO SLASH Sex, Dope Cheap Thrills!
1. Down and Out On the Hogwarts Express

**Year Seven at Hogwarts: **

**Harry Potter and the Naked Lunch: Truth is Permitted.**

In which Harry goes from depravity to enlightenment without becoming boring and sanctimonious.

_Author's Note: I own none of JK Rowling's characters. All I own is the space between my ears, which I use to do what I want with 'em. Heh-heh-heh. Also, if you don't read "The Unbearable Lightness of Being Severus Snape" you may be a bit lost, but if you'd rather not, you'll still catch on. It's a short story, just one chapter._

**Prologue: A Weasley's Wedding, A Werewolf's Holiday.**

Bill caught sight of Harry lurching into the bathroom as he adjusted the eyepatch he used to cover the worst of his scars.

At first, he thought to himself that it was only natural that a kid just eighteen or seventeen might want to get drunk at a big wedding, but then he remembered that Harry had seemed a little drunk even before he got there.

Come to think of it, lately, Harry usually seemed a little drunk.

"Awww shit, ya look great, Bill! I can still tell its you! Ya healed up pretty good, din'cha? Bints, they go mad for a bloke wif scars. Not like you 'ave to worry about that, anymore. Right?" Harry slurred.

He braced one had against the wall, and fumbled at his flies with the other.

Tactfully, Bill stepped aside to avoid the inevitable event of Harry's missing the urinal, which, for the most part, he did.

The poor lad was so drunk, he almost fell over and Bill had to prop him up.

"Fuck, I've pissed all down me leg. Oh well! Fuck it! It won't be the first time. Ya look great, Bill! Gotta wear them goddam battle scars like a badge of honor! Give the ol' lady one for me, huh?" Harry said.

He was about to leave the loo with his flies open and his old fellow hanging out.

"Harry, your flies are undone."

"Wot? Oh yeah. No, no I can get out the fuckin' door myself. I been one fuck of a lot drunker'n this in me life, I gotta tellya. Naw, I'm gonna go see if any of those fuckin' bridesmaids wanna ride on the ol' Firebolt."

Harry turned around and lurched out the door.

Bill literally ran into his little brother on his way out .

"Bill, have you seen Harry?"

"No, I've seen a pathetic, obnoxious drunk what looks just like him. Is he always like this, Ron?"

"Who, Harry? No, not really." Ron said.

They heard a woman scream.

"Oh no. Please God, I hope he didn't unzip his pants." Ron said.

"You'd better get that kid to WAND. C'mon, let's go find him."

Hermione often worried about Harry's drinking.

And his drug use.

And his heedless, rampant promiscuity.

Not to mention the streak of mean-tempered cruelty that his substance abuse problems were bringing out in him. But today, after the latest events in the war and two weeks in St. Mungo's, Hermione was able to simply laugh at Harry's antics, and the way Ron chased him around like a frantic mother hen.

Hermione knew a lot more about the current state of the war than Harry or Ron did. Especially Harry. He'd been left out of a few major operations the Order engaged in for two reasons. First, his life was far too valuable to jeopardise at this stage of the game. And second, he was dangerously close to bottoming out, and in his addled state he wouldn't have been useful for anything.

Hermione, however, was used to keeping secrets, even from her closest friends and family. She, after all was a general in Dumbledore's Army, a secret guerrilla force. As such she had been trained by and took her marching orders from Dumbledore's Spymaster, Severus Snape.

So even as she relaxed and had a good time at the Weasley wedding, Hermione had not even the desire to comment to anyone about the "Ministry Mutiny" or the whispers about "the turning of the tide". Ron and Harry didn't even know she had been in St. Mungo's, let alone why.

Hermione was content to keep it that way.

She had her orders and she was going to follow them. Besides, a good spy's worst enemies could be her best friends. They were the people you wanted to spill the beans to the most, but those to who you could disclose the least.

And Hermione Grainger was both a good soldier and a good spy.

Harry sauntered by their table, with one of the bridesmaids, a petite, black-haired former classmate of Fleur's on his arm. It appeared as though the witch was partially holding Harry up, but he winked at Hermione nonetheless, and used his free arm to indicate in the time-honoured fashion of making a fist and waggling it that he was, indeed, on the job.

Hermione raised her glass to him and took a sip of the Coke inside it.

Ron sat down across from her a few moments later, his brow furrowed with worry.

"Have you seen Harry?" he asked.

"He went off with one of Phlegm's- I mean Fleur's- floozy French bridesmaids a few minutes ago. Don't look so upset, Ron. This one wants Harry to unzip his flies." Hermione replied.

"How can you be so calm? Dumbledore's dead, Snape killed him, Voldemort's taken over the entire Wizarding fucking World and Harry, who's supposed to be the one to save us all, is too busy getting drunk and high and shagging any witch who will agree to it to give a fiddler's fuck!" Ron fulminated.

"Things aren't so bad as all that, Ron. Calm down. Have a drink. Enjoy yourself." Hermione assured him.

Ron shrugged his shoulders and sighed.

"Why not? I suppose we could all be dead tomorrow. How about I go and get us both a second helping of dessert?" he suggested.

"That sounds lovely." Hermione replied.

Back at the burrow, Harry slept soundly because he was drunk and shagged out, Ron stayed up half the night worrying, and Hermione received her next orders via owl post.

_Grainger, _

_Apparate at your next convenience the prince's cottage beyond the forest and in the mountains.. Arrange for an appropriate diversion, and pack for at least a fortnight. All is well, and as it was, and as it should be. _

_Half Blood Prince_

Accordingly, Hermione arranged for Rita Skeeter to print a series of stories in the Daily Prophet about her taking a lurid holiday with Viktor Krum in Ibiza. She packed for a month and apparated to Snape's grandfather's cottage in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania which Snape, his mother, and his grandfather all used for the purpose of staying during expeditions to gather ingredients for potions native only to that most magical of areas.

It was then she realised she hadn't slept for three nights, and she went straight to bed.

Snape himself arrived shortly after she did, and found somebody sleeping in his bed, just like Goldilocks. He made an attempt to awaken her, but to no avail.

Snape was not surprised. In his opinion she had left St. Mungo's far too soon, and she needed more rest and relaxation before the start of the school year. Such amenities would not likely be available to her at the Burrow, with every Weasley on God's Green Earth running about, not to mention babysitting the wreck that had until recently been Harry Potter.

Another one of Albus' miscalculations. No matter. Snape was sure the Potter situation could be remedied nicely once the school year started and Potter was back at Hogwarts.

He was pondering the course of the school years when Hermione shuffled into the sitting room, dressed in a pair of orange cotton knickers and a Who tee-shirt.

"Oh. It's you, Snape. What's the mission?"

"No mission, Grainger. The mission is over, for now. Time for you to get some rest and prepare yourself for 7th year. This is a holiday. Just you and I on holiday together."

"In that case, wake me in a couple more hours. I haven't slept since the wedding. I'm exhausted."

Hermione went back into the bedroom, and fell back to sleep almost immediately after he head hit the pillow.

Snape selected a book from the shelf, settled into a chair, removed one of his English Ovals and lit up.

"Treacher?" he called.

His house elf apparated with a loud crack.

"Oh we is in the mountains! Treacher likes the mountains. Treacher has not had a holiday for a long time!" he said.

The elf pulled up his socks and pulled down his "Hogwarts Faculty '84" tee shirt. Treacher had been in the prince family for years, but he was appalled at the way his Mistress and her worthless Muggle husband treated the young Master, so he cast his lot in with the young Master from the time Snape first attended Hogwarts as a student. Snape, having been so horribly abused as a child didn't like the idea of having a slave, so he freed Treacher.

Treacher appreciated the gesture, but he never left.

"Here is an ashtray for the Master. Now Treacher will check on Miss Grainger . Master is sweating. Treacher will make it nice and cool for Master. Then, Treacher makes dinner!" the little elf announced, happily.

"Treacher, wouldn't you like a new tee shirt? That one is ancient."

"Master is wearing tee shirt Master got at Led Zeppelin concert in 1977. Treacher's tee shirt is not so old."

"True." Snape decided.

"Master should not chain smoke! Even with special portion master drinks, master's lungs must be withered and black!" Treacher admonished him.

"After the war is over, I'll try to cut down." Snape told Treacher.

"Treacher has been hearing that since 1977. Treacher will believe it when Treacher sees it!"

Snape waited until Treacher went off to the bedroom to laugh.

"Just think, if Riddle doesn't kill me, smoking will. How ironic." He commented.

**Chapter One: Down and Out on the Hogwarts Express**

Harry very nearly missed the Hogwarts Express, completely.

He woke up in the morning and the first thing he was aware of was that he wasn't aware of anything.

"Dudley…" he muttered.

"Dudley! Dudley, c'mon, I can't get out of fucking bed again!" Harry bellowed.

There had been a lot of mornings, of late, when his newly good-natured jock cousin had to help him get out of bed and half-carry him to the bathroom.

He and Dudley had actually had some good times that summer. He turned his cousin on to Led Zeppelin and _The Harder They Come_, and they spent a lot of time listening to music and smoking weed.

Harry was still laughing about how Uncle Vernon had to come and bail them both out of the nick for underage drinking and disorderly conduct after some PC Plod caught them pissing against the wall outside the pub where they'd been getting completely legless.

Harry, however, was into the whole drugs thing a hell of a lot further than Dudley's youthful indiscretions.

"Duuudleeeey! Duuuudleeeeyyyy! This isn't fucking funny! If I piss the bed you'll 'ave to 'elp me clean it up, you know!' Harry shouted.

Finally, the fact that Dudley did not appear made Harry think that he wasn't at Privet Drive, after all.

He fumbled for his glasses and found them on a nightstand.

He was lying in a strange bed, naked, with a sore lip and dried blood here and there on his chest, with a strange witch snoring away beside him.

"Uggh, she looks skanky. I hope to God I wore a rubber." He said to himself.

Harry stumbled across the room, opened the window and tried to remember what had happened the night before as he pissed into the street below.

He vaguely remembered sneaking out of his bedroom at the Dursleys and taking the Knight Bus somewhere and then somehow getting a fat lip and meeting up with whoever she was.

After that it all became a blur of ganja, shagging, drinking Jack and snorting smack.

He looked around the room and located his trunk and Hedwig.

She had a look of distaste on her face.

"Well, at least I remembered to bring you." Harry told the owl, who hooted, sympathetically.

"Come on, Hedwig, let's get out of this filthy pisshole before we both catch some awful disease."

Harry dressed in a hurry.

He hoped whoever he'd fought with, it hadn't been anyone he went to school with.

He checked to see if his wallet was still chained up to his Levis and it was, but half his money and his Magus Charge were missing.

Henry woke the sleeping witch by prodding her with the business end of his wand.

"Where's me fucking money, you cow?" he demanded.

"Fuck you, sugar." The witch said.

"Wrong answer, princess." Harry replied, sardonically.

"_Crucio_!" he exclaimed.

The witch began to writhe in pain.

"One more time. Where the fuck is me fucking money, you fucking cow!" Harry shouted.

"Drawer! Drawer!" The witch howled.

Harry moved his wand away, and got his money and his credit card and put them in his wallet.

"That's better, luv."

"You bastard! I'm going to report you for that!" the witch promised.

"Oh yeah? D'you know what comes after _avada_?" Harry sneered, and pointed his wand at her, again.

"Ah, go fuck yourself. You're full of shit. You don't 'ave the bollocks." the witch replied.

It was at that point Harry realised that he may be in a little bit of big trouble.

She rolled over and pulled up her sheets.

Harry gave her a smack on the arse, and she rolled over, again.

He handed her a little bag of gold coins.

"Look, I'm sorry about that. But I don't like being ripped off, yunno? 'Ere, take this. Keep your pie hold shut about all this." He warned the witch.

She smiled, showing her crumbly, crooked, yellow junkie teeth.

"Cor, look at all his money! You're awright, 'Arry Potter! What unforgivable curse?" she asked.

"Let's keep it that way. Now we're even. No 'ard feelins' right?"

"Wot from me? Naw. You didn't 'it me in the face. Witch like me gets used to a li'le "_crucio_" now and again, as long as I don't get 'it in the face." She said.

"Well, I , ah, I don't hit women. 'Oo knows, maybe I'll see yer again, sometime." He said.

"Oh sure. Cheers, mate." The witch burbled happily, hefting the bag of money in her hand.

Harry left the witch happily counting the pile of money. He stopped in the stairwell to make sure to look in his trunk to make sure she hadn't stolen his bottle of Captain Morgan's for the train ride, and then he went out into the light of day.

Bleary eyed, rumpled, hung-over, unshaven, and having uttered one-and-a-half unforgivable curses before ten in the morning; Harry stumbled to the kerb, spit reflectively into the gutter, hailed a cab, and fell asleep on his way to the station.

The first thing Hermione had to say to him was that he looked terrible.

Harry carefully emptied his pockets, and out came a series of baggies, all his lovely stashes. It seemed like enough to last him until he could get to one of his connections and score.

"Blimey, Harry, is that heroin?" Ron asked.

"Well it's sure as fuck not rock candy! Don't worry about me Ron, that's enough to last me a month. Relax, I never touch needles, I'm no junkie. But I got a brick of grass in me trunk. Jamaican stuff. Let's smoke up." Harry suggested.

Hermione looked at the two big chunks of what looked just like rock candy in the little baggie before Harry shoved the baggie back into his pocket.

"Oh my God, Harry, that is heroin! And where did that blood all over you come from? What's next, Purple Doom?" she said.

"Aww, I got a fat lip somewhere, I can't remember. I'll change me kit later. And don't worry about me fucking about with Purple Doom. As long as I stick with Muggle drugs, I'm alright. And like I said, this is enough for a month. And I probably won't buy anymore."

He pulled out the bottle of rum.

"Wanna drink, Ron?"

"No thanks, Harry. Christ, this is strong stuff. I'm half-baked, already. Want a toke, Hermione?"

"No thank you, Ron."

Hermione was worried about Harry. And she was more worried that under his influence Ron, who just smoked a little pot here and there would turn into as big of a druggie as Harry was.

"Harry, don't you think you should see somebody about this drugs problem? Hogsmeade has a chapter of WAND, you know."

"Awww, I don't need WAND, Hermione. I'm not gonna be one of those poor sad bastards sitting around eating cookies and drinking butterbeer and pumpkin juice saying how I'm a drunk and a junkie, boo fucking hoo. You worry too much. I just like to have a little fun."

Actually, Harry was pretty sure he was a drunk, and a junkie, and a vicious thug, and about a million other connected and unpleasant things. Between his drug use, his indiscriminate use of hexes and the occasional unforgivable, not to mention various acts of physical violence, like tossing wizards through plate glass windows in Knockturn Alley for saying unkind things about his late friends and relatives, Harry he knew if he was ever found out he could very we'll land in Azkaban for a long time. However, he was also fairly sure that he could weasel out of trouble using his money and a glamour or some illicit polyjuice potion from his connections in Knockturn Alley. Regardless, Harry knew if he kept on the way he was one of his habits would kill him, long before he could get sent off to jail. But whether it was a bar fight, a bad hex, an OD, or choking on his vomit in a drunken stupor, or meeting his fate at the hands of a spurned witch or an irate wizard whose entire family he had fucked and forgotten, Harry didn't much care if he lived or died and if he died, so what? He'd at least have cheated that son-of-a bitch Tom Riddle out of the pleasure of killing him.

Ron started to cough.

"That's all for me right now, Harry. Jesus, my head's spinning."

"This is only the beginning, mate. This year we're all just going to enjoy our last year at Hogwarts and have a good time. No more almost getting me friends killed. No more deaths. No more sacrifices. Fuck that shit. I'm done." Harry proclaimed.

Ron wasn't sure he really understood what Harry was saying, but if it was what he thought Harry was saying, then it wasn't just the ganja that was making him feel good.

"Do you mean, Harry that we are really and truly done with almost getting ourselves killed trying to defeat Voldemort when no one else cares a monkey's?" he asked, hopefully.

Harry looked down over his glasses, rubbed his scar and his stubble, and took a long drag on the spliff.

Then he passed it to Ron.

"Fuck Voldemort. My parents are dead, my godfather is dead, even poor old Dumbledore is dead. And your brother is all fucked up. Let the adults fucking worry about Tom fucking Riddle, the cunt." Harry replied, sourly.

"I don't know. Bill's not too pretty anymore, but he's been telling Fred and George and me, he just fucking goes, now. Fleur is one happy girl, I can tell you that. Maybe I should get bit by a werewolf." Ron replied

"Ron! Your brother was mauled beyond recognition!" Hermione exclaimed.

"He got better! I mean you can still tell it's Bill. He has a few scars on his face, but some girls think that kind of thing is sexy." Ron protested, also

"Don't be so fucking melodramatic, Hermione. I got a scar on me face, and girls find it no end of fucking sexy. Everybody but you, that is. I thought Bill looked alright. I could still tell it was Bill, for fuck's sake." Harry griped.

Uncomfortably, Ron remembered Bill taking him aside at the wedding and telling him that he'd better do something about Harry.

That was right before they had to stop him from asking any more female guest if they'd like to see his Firebolt, and then unzipping his pants.

Ron dropped back into the present.

Harry was one hell of a lot more fucked up than that, right now.

"…I'm done with this saving the world shit. I've given up enough in my life and so have you. So have all of us. Let the fucking adults worry about Mouldy Old Voldy. He's a stupid tosser anyway. Always trying to kill me the same way, which never fucking works. No, I say we just have a normal year at school, and a fucking good time." Harry pronounced.

"Will you two put that thing out? I am trying to read and my eyes are getting all watery." Hermione complained.

"What are you reading?" Harry asked.

"Lady Chatterley's Lover." Hermione replied.

"Oooooo, look who's interested in fucking? I thought you were dead from the neck down." Ron taunted her.

"Maybe I'm just not interested in immature men like you." Hermione countered.

"We all know who Professor Snape's favourite student is. And why. Your boyfriend, the murdering traitor." Ron continued.

Ron didn't actually think that Hermione was really having an affair with Snape. And he'd heard the rumours that all was not as it seemed with Professor Snape and Dumbledore's death. He knew it was all business with them, you could tell by the way they acted towards one another. He was just being snarky.

Harry, on the other hand, knew it was true.

The previous year, he'd gone into Snape's laboratory under cover of his Invisibility Cloak to get the ingredients he needed to make his own smack, based on the notations of the Half-Blood Prince.

As it turned out, he didn't have the skill to make the potion, even with the Half-Blood Prince's detailed instructions.

But…

Harry had thought the Professor was out, so he almost died when he came into the lab from the loo just as Harry was cutting through with his goods en-route to the door. He nearly died a second time when Hermione came in to deliver a war briefing, and Snape locked the door behind her.

It certainly was all, business between them, they even called each other "Grainger" and "Snape". Harry almost died a second time when, without either of them changing their demeanour, Snape sat her on the desk, Hermione hiked up her skirt, then the wicked old screw unbuttoned his robes, unzipped his trousers, produced a one-eyed trouser anaconda that reminded Harry of the Firebolt, and rogered the hell out of her, just like that.

Harry had turned to the wall and put his fingers in his ears. It was horrible, but most of all he just wanted to laugh. It made both of them seem a little more human to him, especially old Snape. Maybe he was a murdering bastard, but it was more likely this was just another of Dumbledore's master plans. The wicked old screw was only human, wasn't he? It was funny to think of the Potions Master as just a randy old Scouser. He supposed the man had to get a nut like everybody else, and with who else but with Miss Cold Fish, herself, Hermione?

Who was anything but cold with the greasy Scouse git.

The murdering bastard.

Sure, right. They had to have an ace up their sleeves, somewhere. There had to be a catch.

There just had to be.

"Eech! Ron, that's disgusting! The idea of any living creature, even a farm animal, going through the degradation of actually being fucked by that filthy disgusting creature is nauseating, let alone our friend Hermione!" Harry protested.

He laughed into his drink remembering that even though he had his fingers in his ears, he could still hear the desk pounding against the flagstones and Hermione yelling his name and Snape growling dirty things at her in his low, filthy Scouse accent.

Hermione was just the type of bird to go for a dirty old bastard like Snape, though.

"The Professor is not a murdering bastard. You're both so fucking immature and what's worse is you don't know shit." Hermione sniffed.

"Oh yeah? Well I read Rita Skeeter's article about you and Viktor Krum and your little holiday in Ibiza. That was all very mature, I suppose." Ron retorted.

Hermione just rolled her eyes.

"I've got the munchies. Come on, Ron, let's find the witch with the goodie wagon."

"Would you like anything, Hermione?" Ron asked.

Hermione's frown softened.

Ron was such a dear boy.

"Something chocolate, I think. Chocolate goes so well with erotica." She observed.

Poor Ron felt a weakening in his knees and a tug in his groin.

"It sure does." He fairly groaned.

"Oh, sorry Ron." Hermione apologised, biting her lip.

Harry dragged Ron out of the berth before he could further make an asre of himself.

"Untuck your shirt, you've got a boner." He told his friend.

"So would you, if you were me. Do you think Hermione has a boyfriend. "

"I wouldn't call it that. But yeah, she's spoken for. And I've met her bloke. You're not her type. She likes beasts."

"I'm fairly beastly." Ron said

Harry put his hand on Ron's shoulder.

"Take it easy, Ron. You'll find somebody."

"I have somebody!" Ron muttered.

Harry pointed his wand at the bulge in Ron's robes.

"_De-engorgio!"_ Harry pronounced.

"Thanks, mate." Ron said.

They were on their way back to Hermione with armfuls of treats when who should come swanning by but their least favourite screaming queen, Malfoy.

"I don't hate him cos he's a queer. I hate him cos he's a right berk." Ron observed.

"I'll have you know, Weasley, that I drive my car down both sides of the street. Which means I get twice as much as you are not getting. Well, look who it is! It's Potter, the king of the rubbish tip, and his secret love slave! I just love the moustache and sidies, Weasley. They're so butch!" Draco exclaimed.

Goyle laughed dully, and Crabbe didn't seem to get it.

"Fuck off, Draco. Why don't you and your two girlfriends go lick one another's ares'oles." Ron retorted.

"Oooo, we're so touchy aren't we? Maybe it's because there's only one virgin in the senior class and I'm looking at him! Let's face it, ducky, all the magic in the world won't get you laid!" Malfoy taunted.

"Draco, its people like you that give all the nice, happy, well adjusted queers in the world a bad name." Harry told him, and steered Ron back towards their compartment.

"I am not a virgin!" Ron protested.

"Ron, having a wank while Moaning Myrtle talks dirty to you does not count as sex." Harry explained.

"Well she wants to do it! It's not my fault she's a ghost!" Ron protested.

"I know." Harry said, sympathetically. "Well, I'm gonna go take a piss. I'll be right back, okay?"

Ron headed back towards their compartment and both Draco and Harry watched him go.

They each looked both ways.

"You got any shit for me, Malfoy?" Harry asked.

"Not much. My father's joined up with WAND again, and now I'm out of business. Crabbe's and Goyle's dads, too." Draco complained.

Harry grabbed Draco by the robe.

"Fuck! You can't do this to me, Malfoy! I'm your best customer!"

Malfoy pushed him away.

"Mind the robe, Potter. Pansy did this embroidery for me. Look, I'm not sure I want to do business with you anymore. You nearly killed me in the loo last year and you were the one who tried to cheat me."

Harry let Malfoy go.

Without Draco, he had to venture into Knockturn Alley by himself, a dangerous prospect considering he was the Boy Who lived on one hand and the amount of enemies hae's made there on the other.

Not that he hadn't done it. Not that he wouldn't do it again.

"That was just a misunderstanding. I didn't rat you out, did I? C'mon Malfoy, don't hold out on me." Harry said, half-wheedling, half-threatening.

"Who's holding out? Don't blame me, Potter, it's not my fault! Would I lie to you? I mean I already know you're willing to kill me, don't I? Listen, I'll sell you what I've got, and I think I have some other connections. Come talk to me again in a few weeks, after I can get to Knockturn Alley. Don't look so worried, ducky! I can't afford to disappoint me customers. Now, show me the money."

Harry opened his palm, which shined with gold coins.

Draco checked it with a wave of his wand to make sure Harry wasn't cheating him, again.

"Goyle, give me the package."

The two enemies looked around again, and Draco and Harry exchanged the money for a brown lunchbag.

Harry went on his way to the loo, and Crabbe, Goyle, and Malfoy returned to their compartments.

"That's going to be the last dope anybody sells to Potter. That poor bastard is finished." Malfoy commented to them.

He made a mental note to report Harry's deterioration to his godfather, as soon as possible.

"I'm worried about him, Hermione. I mean, did you see the way he was just chugging that rum? And he was fucked up when he got on the coach. Not to mention he's filthy, he's got blood all over his clothes and he smells like a rubbish tip. Poor Harry. I mean, fucking smack? What are we going to do?" Ron asked.

"We're going to have to get him some help, Ron. Or else Voldemort is not going to have to go to the trouble of killing Harry." Hermione replied.

"Could someone come to the door? I've got Harry and I can't open it."

Ron opened the door and there was Neville, supporting Harry, who looked unsteady on his feet.

His eyes were rolling around in his head, he was groaning incoherently and blood and a white substance dribbled from his nose.

"Holy shit! Merlin's bollocks! Lemme help you, Neville. Come on Harry. Let's go sit down. No, no more drinks for you. Hermione, could you go find us some coffee? Or something?' Ron said, as he and Neville steered Harry into a seat.

"Where did you find him?" Hermione asked.

She and Ron and Neville did their best to clean Harry up.

"Flat on his face on the floor in the loo. And I'm pretty sure whatever it is that's coming out his nose isn't powdered sugar. Look, if we need to have an intervention, or something, you can count me in." Neville said.

"Neville, don't tell anyone." Ron pleaded.

"I won't. Um, I'm not sure why, but Professor Lupin is on the train. Shall I go get him?"

Ron and Hermione looked at Harry.

"Yes. Please. Hurry." Hermione said.

Neville rushed out.

"But Hermione, we'll get Harry in trouble."

"No we won't. Remus knows everything. Don't worry about Harry, Ron. We are going to take care of him, now."

Ron was about to ask her who "we" included besides the two of them and Ginny, who came in with Neville and Remus Lupin.

"Ron, take Neville and your sister and Hermione into the hallway. Please, all of you, go. You don't want to see this."

Lupin opened the bag he had with him, and took out several vials of foul smelling potions and the biggest hypodermic needle that any of them had ever seen.

A few minutes later they heard Harry scream, and Lupin came out, looking paler than usual.

"He'll be alright until we get to Hogwarts for the intervention." Their ex-professor told them.

In the compartment, Harry was slugging down rum and buttoning his robes.

"Man. What a rush!" he commented.

Ron, Hermione and Neville all had to restrain Ginny.


	2. Good News, Bad Breaks, Big Trouble

**Chapter Two: Good News, Bad Breaks, Big Trouble**

As usual, there was a new Defence against the Dark Arts teacher, and unexpectedly, an unhappy looking Severus Snape was being bumped back to Potions in Slughorn's absence.

Hermione was named Head Girl, which was also not an unexpected occurrence.

Draco Malfoy was named Head Boy, which was an unexpected occurrence.

About as unexpected as Snape sitting in his usual spot with the faculty, as if he hadn't sort of , oh, _murdered_ Albus Dumbledore a couple months ago.

Harry wasn't feeling so good.

Whatever it was Lupin had shot him up with to bring him around was giving him this funny feeling. Like there was something inside him that was throwing up into his guts and he had this crawly feeling inside his skin like something terrible was going to be born out of all of his orifices at once.

He was used to being strung out and seeing shit that wasn't there and people not quite looking like they should in his eyes but this was an altogether different feeling and if he had felt well enough to walk he would have gone to the can to have a fortifying snort.

What was Snape doing up there?

A little bit of hope rose within Harry.

There was a catch.

"Something's up. Dumbledore and that greasy Scouse git had something up their sleeves." He told Hermione.

"I told you everything was going to be okay this year." Hermione reminded him.

The new teacher was a celebrated if not somewhat disgraced auror named Oliver Crich. When he stood up to speak at the welcoming dinner, all of the girls over the age of 12 were paying rapt attention.

Professor Crich was tall, a little over six foot, with broad shoulders, a broad chest and great, sturdy legs with thick, meaty thighs. His hair was straight, black and unruly and so were his beard and moustache and he had feral pale blue eyes through which his wolfish nature was readily apparent.

Unlike Remus Lupin, Crich was a proud half-werewolf, from a long line of same. He had his transformative powers completely under control, and was totally comfortable with the duality of his nature.

He was reputed to be a hard-drinker, and a very lusty fellow, ravenous in his appetites for the pleasures of lie as well as an accomplished scholar.

He was a terribly handsome man, all in all.

"On behalf of your headmaster, I would like to welcome you all back to Hogwarts for what I hope will be a better year than the past few. To answer your questions, yes I am an auror, no I was not sacked, I left the Ministry because they are all a bunch of twits and arseholes, yes I did say arseholes, and yes I am a werewolf, but I have my gift completely under control, rather like an animagus. No there is no cause for alarm. Finally, I give the podium over to your Headmaster."

Harry couldn't believe it when Albus Dumbledore apparated in the middle of the room.

His quite unexpected appearance was greeted by thunderous applause. But, after the rest of the student body had taken their seats, Harry remained standing.

Sort of.

"Fuck me, Professor Dumbledore! You're not dead!" Harry exclaimed, jubilantly.

Even he had not expected that turn of events.

People would have laughed, but they were too shocked to see the condition Harry was in.

"Language, Harry, language. No, the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. They were a necessary step in the war of wits we have been waging against Lord Voldemort. A few other false trails have been laid, and there have been great changes at the Ministry of Magic over the holiday. Suffice it to say that the tide has turned against Tom Riddle. We now have the upper hand. The Ministry and Azkaban are no longer under his control, and most of his army of Death Eaters has been dealt with. He will, however, I' m sure, regroup and mount a counter-attack, but it will take him months to recover from the blows we have dealt him. We will be ready for him when he comes, and I would like to assure all of you that Hogwarts is safe from Tom Riddle, and so is Hogsmeade. So, I would like you all to concentrate on your studies and try to enjoy yourselves. Not to worry, children, the adults are going to take care of the problems, this year, for a change. Now, let's eat!"

Dumbledore sat down and then Professor McGonagall mentioned something to him and he stood up again.

"Thank you, Minerva. Oh, one more thing. Despite protests from some parents who must be in a big hurry to become grandparents early in life, contraceptive spells for young ladies will be available on a don't ask, don't tell basis in the infirmary. The process is completely confidential and no one but you will know you have had it. I must warn you though, that this spell is no protection against…the list Minerva…thank you. Ahem…no protection against AIDS, chlamydia, herpes, crabs, pants elves, gonorrhoea, syphilis, scabies, leaping dragoniferous crotch rot, HPV, snoids of, ah, either orifice, the common cold or any spells to interfere with your naughty bits. For this purpose, we also have Semi-Permanent Magical Condoms available. They will protect you against all of the aforementioned conditions, except the common cold, and spells, and also prevent pregnancy. They are made of a magical substance that bonds with your own skin so it's like not wearing one at all, and they last for three months before they must be replaced. They must, however be removed and scourgefied after each use. I think it would be wise for all of our sexually active students to avail themselves of both as soon as possible. Thank you."

Harry was so happy he was beside himself.

Dumbledore was alive, he didn't have to worry about Voldemort, and the school was giving away free magical contraceptives.

"Yeh look 'appy, 'Arry. I did check with the infirmary, and they've got the rubber in double extra large size, so's fellers like us ain't left out. And don't yeh worry about You Know Who. Last time I 'eard, 'e was in Greenland, lookin' for 'alf a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring. I'll see you all in Care of Magical Creatures. This year, we're goin' to learn how to hatch a dragon egg with burlap and 'eat lamps." Hagrid told them, jokingly, as he passed their table.

"Harry, why do you need to worry about size extra large?" Hermione joked.

As if everybody in the Wizarding World hadn't heard the rumours.

Harry leered at her.

"Cos I got a Firebolt of me own, right 'ere." He said, patting his flies. "Thirteen and a half inches long and as big around as your wrist. Just like John Holmes." Harry reported.

"Really." Hermione said, drolly.

"You think I'm lyin'? Ask Ginny. G'wan, Ginny, you tell' em." Harry bragged.

Ron dropped his spoon into his soup.

Ginny punched him on the injured side of his face, and his lip split open, again.

"You are such a fucking berk, Harry!" Ginny exclaimed.

She looked over at her brother and opened her mouth to say something, but nothing would come out.

Ron looked like someone had punched him in the stomach.

"Goddam you, Harry Potter! I hope you had a good time the last time we was together, because that was the last time!" she exclaimed, and fled the table so that no one would see her cry.

Ginny was a pretty tough witch, the toughest witch at Hogwarts; she didn't like anybody to see her cry.

That galvanised Ron into action.

"You…you…you filthy bastard! You piece of shit! Of all the birds in the world, of all of them… my sister! My little sister! You had to pick her! You fucking tosser! How could you? How could you fuck my little sister!" Ron squawked, rather loudly.

"Ron, don't over react. I love Ginny. I do. I mean it." Harry explained, as he blotted his lip with his napkin.

He was about to go after her, but Ron grabbed him by the collar.

"You love her? You? You randy swine! I know how many Boy Who Lived groupies you've impaled on the end of your fucking nob! Don't you dare say you love my sister!" Ron insisted.

"Ron, don't make a scene! Ginny and I have an open relationship." Harry told him.

"Harry, it might be best if you shut the fuck up." Hermione suggested.

"A scene? A scene! I'll give you a fucking scene!"

Harry thought that Ron was going to pull out his wand and cast some spell over him, but he just hauled off and punched Harry in the nose, breaking both his nose and his glasses.

Then he tripped over his chair and ran from the Great Hall.

Harry tried to preserve some of his dignity, with blood dripping out of his nose and his mouth.

"I think my nose is broken. Again." Harry observed, glumly.

He was thankful for the fact that he was high as a kite and drink as a skunk or he would have been far more embarrassed and humiliated.

"Potter, you're a filthy swine!" Malfoy called.

It seemed everyone in the school was giving him a dirty look.

"Hermione, could you fix me glasses?' Harry asked.

"Fix them yourself! You really should have told Ron about you and Ginny! And not like that! Malfoy's right, Harry. You are a filthy swine." She said, and ran after Ron.

"Hell of a way to start the year, Harry." Neville told him.

"Fucking bollocks. I'm going to go get some air." Harry said and stumbled for the door.

* * *

He had been stumbling around the grounds for quite some time, draining the contents of his emergency flask of home-made laudanum when he noticed there was a big, black, shaggy dog following him about.

Harry finally stopped to talk to it.

"Hello, fella. You look just like my Godfather, Sirius. I wish he was still around. At least he could fix my glasses." He slurred.

"That is the least I can do, Harry! _Reparo!_" _Episkey!_"

In a flash, Harry's glasses and his nose were no longer broken, and there was his Godfather, Sirius Black, looking a bit raggedy and unkempt, but very much alive and well.

"Sirius! You're alive! Unless you're a ghost."

"No. I'm not a ghost, Harry. Here , wipe the blood off your face."

Harry took Sirius' monogrammed handkerchief and daubed at his wounds.

"Where have you been? I saw you pass through the Veil."

"Yes, Harry, but, fortunately for me, there was a mirror behind me, and that is where I ended up. Through the Looking Glass. Just like Alice in bloody Wonderland. Alive and trapped. All I could do was look through mirrors and watch what was going on in this world. Finally, I managed to navigate my way back to my own home."

"How did you know how to get out?"

"I didn't. Kreacher decided to clean all the mirrors and I was surprised he could see me on the other side looking in. He did the dance of joy to see his master was still alive and, through some kind of Elf magic, I suppose, he just reached right in and pulled me back. Then he broke the mirror. First, Harry, I'm sorry that we adults dragged you and your friends into this war. We should be protecting you and your schoolmates, not putting you out front as cannon fodder. I don't want you to worry about any of it this year. After the Ministry Mutiny, we have everything under control." Sirius assured Harry.

"Ministry Mutiny? What's that?"

"It was rather unpleasant, Harry. Mutinies usually are. Let's just say that Scrimgeour and his ilk are out and Dumbledore's Army and the Order is in. Now, how did you get your glasses and your nose broken? Angry husband or boyfriend, irate father, bar fight, or did you short your pusher?"

Harry was surprised that Sirius knew what he'd been up to, but if he could look through mirrors and see what was happening on the other side, he must have gotten quite a few eyefuls of bad behaviour.

"It was Ron, actually. He found out I've been shagging his sister. And Ginny's not too happy with me right now, either."

Sirius winced.

"If you still want to have a friend, I think you had better go and explain yourself to him. But go see your girlfriend, first."

"Fuck that. Fuck Ron. He can go fuck himself. Everybody can go fuck themselves. " Harry spat.

"Harry, what's the matter with you? And don't say it's nothing, because I have been watching you. I've seen some of the things you've been doing and I haven't been able to believe my eyes! You're like the one man roadshow of _Naked Lunch_! Just what the fuck do you think you're doing to yourself? Ever since you turned fifteen, you've become an angry, surly little punk. I know you've had a lot of awful shit happen in your life, but people like Albus and I, and even Sniv-, er, Snape, and Ron and Ginny and Hermione, I might add, have nearly gotten killed trying to protect you. Even Lily's rotten family has always looked after you. They could have stuck you with foster parents, or jammed you into some piece of shit orphanage. And look at you! It's not even four o'clock and you are absolutely legless. There's stubble all over your face, and blood on your clothes, you've got eyes like glass marbles, and you smell like a Rastafarian convention. Well? This is not a rhetorical question?" Sirius demanded.

Harry fished in the pockets of his robe and produced a pack of English Ovals, and lit one with his wand.

"I suppose I've just lost too much. Lost me way. Fuck it. If I die before Voldemort gets me, I win, anyway." Harry commented.

Sirius aimed his wand at the cigarette in Harry's mouth.

"_EXPELLIARIMUS!" _ he bellowed.

The force of the spell blew the fag out of Harry mouth and knocked him on his ass.

Sirius hauled him to his feet.

"Bullshit, Harry! I spent most of your life in Azkaban, for a crime, I might add, I did not commit! You don't know the kind of things that happen to a man in that terrible place, and you don't want to. Terrible things happen to people in life. Muggles and witches and wizards as well. There may be people better off than you, but there are many, may people a lot worse off. When you were 13 years old, Harry, you saved my life. You were one of the most promising wizards in your year, and I was proud that you were my godson. You were bright, you were charming, you had wit and courage and spirit. You still have it, somewhere, buried under your self-pity and your compulsions. You may think that personal tragedy has turned you into the ramshackle slob you are today, but it isn't. I'll tell you what's ruined you, Harry. You started believing your own bullshit, and feeling sorry for yourself. That great fat load of bollocks about you being the poor, tragic Boy Who Lived. And the rest of the bullshit about Harry the Great, Harry the Hero. If you were just plain old Harry Potter, just another young wizard trying to make his way in this world and not end up on the wrong end of a Death Curse during this time of war, well you'd not go around yelling at everyone and fucking your best mate's sister so everybody knew but him, and shrugging off school and getting high and drunk and into fights, all the while boo-hooing about how sensitive and tortured you are. Expecting to just slide through life with everyone loving you. But Harry the Hero, The Boy Who Lived, he can do what he likes. You know who else thinks that way? Tom Riddle. He's so full of himself he's restyled himself Lord Voldemort."

Sirius let go of Harry's robe and Harry stumbled a bit and fell on his arse on the ground again.

"I thought you were dead! I thought Dumbledore was dead! Everything I ever love has been taken from me!" Harry protested.

"Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, Harry! Cry me a goddamn river, you spoilt little shit! Do you think you're the only one? The only one in the world who's lost everything they ever loved? It's grow-up time, and I am sick and fucking tired of listening to you snivel your way into oblivion! Your act's getting old. I know you're a better man than that. I saw the beginning of this when you were in the Order of the Phoenix, and I can see now that Snape was right about you going to hell in a handcar! Albus has been too lenient with you. Stop acting like a spoiled fucking little girl! Go back in that castle and apologise to your friend. Change your clothes, flush your stash, have a shower and a shave and start going to WAND! Why don't you apply yourself to your studies for a change? Have you seen your O.W.L's? I have. In fact, I saw you drinking rum and Cokes all night at the Hog's Head and then getting high and having a three-way with a couple of witches you picked up there the night before one of them, instead of studying. And I left before you got going, so I don't know who else came to the party, or what else when down your throat, in your lungs, or up your nose! At this rate you won't get a job collecting an auror's garbage, let alone becoming one! Let me tell you something, Harry. You're a junkie, and you're a drunk, and if you go on this way you'd better pray you choke on your own vomit or OD in the Wizard's room of some dive in Knockturn Alley. Because Tom Riddle and you are not going to have some mad megalomaniacal duel amid the ruins of Hogwarts or any romantic load of bollocks like that. He's going to be in Azkaban for the rest of his life, or end under the executioner's axe. And if you live, you are going to end up a shambling, broken-down smacked-out drunk who wears the same pot-smelling robes every day and the same trainers with puke on the toes. You'll end up driving the night bus, hoping for the appearance of ageing Potter groupies. And you will need an ocean of booze and a mountain of smack to steel yourself for pulling over and fucking some dizzy and prematurely-aged witch with a fat belly and saggy titties on top of a pile of old Daily Prophets and Chocolate Frog packets in the back of the bus after telling her the same tired, ancient stories about how you used to be the Boy Who Lived before you turned to a piss-smelling, beer-bellied old junkie sot by the age of 35." Sirius chastised him.

Harry was shocked. No one except Snape ever spoken to him like that, and hearing if from Sirius made him think. Of course, it was all true. He had given in to self-pity, and gone a long way towards believing the bullshit that people like Rita Skeeter write about him. What had happened to the courageous, dedicated boy who wanted to be an auror and saved Ginny Weasley and Sirius Black? How had he grown up to be a self-pitying pompous drunk who treated his friends like garbage and used the tragedies that he had once fought to overcome as an excuse to slide into defeat? When had he become a bitter junkie, and a thug, and all that was bad and sick and wrong in the world?

Harry knew he was out of control, and he knew he was killing himself, but he didn't know how to stop, or if he could stop, Now that he knew Dumbledore and Sirius were alive and that somebody had a plan for what to do about Voldemort, he had had some hope. He sort of wanted to turn his life around, but he was afraid his fate was already sealed.

If his parents could see him from the afterlife, what had they thought when he performed the Cruciatus Curse on some junkie doom freak witch for fifty knicker and a credit card?

What would he say to them if he met them in the next world with the toot of smack that killed him still dribbling out of his nose, and puke all over his shoes?

What then, did the deaths of his parents and Cedric Diggory and the sufferings of his godfather and Professor Dumbledore amount to?

They were in vain.

Sirius was right; no wizard's duel was necessary, he had already let Voldemort win.

Harry had seen what was on the end of his fork and it was himself, pieced with the tines and dancing a spastic death jig like a worm on the end of a hook.

"My God, Sirius, how could I let this happen to me? What can I do?"

Under the weight of his pain, his addiction, and his maddened mind sizzling and fried in firewhiskey, heroin and self-pity, Harry sunk into a puddle of black robes, limbless and jellified in the courtyard, like a heap of dry old bones settled in their own dust.

Sirius bent down, hauled Harry to his feet and put his arm around him, partially to steady him, partially to reassure him.

"Harry, you're only just 18. And you've still got an entire year of school left. You've plenty of time to turn your life around. We can get you into a treatment program of some kind. I can help you with the criminal offences you'd committed. I'm a bit higher up in the Ministry, now. If you really want to beat Lord Voldemort, you have to get clean and get your life back together. Start concentrating on your studies this term. I'm sorry I had to talk to you like that, but I only did it because I love you. Someone had to get through to you, Harry. You won't listen to your teachers. Or your friends. Having said that, I'm not just going to deliver my bit and split. You're going to be seeing a lot of me this year. I'll start going to the Hogsmeade WAND meetings After all, I'm the closest person to a father you know."

"I'll try to straighten out my act. Um, Sirius?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"It hurts when I pee, and there's yellow stuff coming out of my old fellow. I'm pretty sure I got the clap again. What do you think?"

Sirius tried to remain serious.

"Yes, Harry, you do. Go see Madame Pomfrey. One of your innumerable legions of adoring groupies has indeed given you the clap."

"Is there a potion for that?"

"No. Just the old fashioned Muggle cure."

"Penicillin and several shots in the arse with a very long needle?"

"Don't remind me."

"You sound like you know from experience."

"I was young, once. Be glad it's not leaping dragoniferous crotch rot. Come on, Harry, let's get you to the infirmary."


	3. Harry At Fork's End

**Chapter 3: Harry at Fork's End**

Good things did not await Harry and Sirius back at the school.

Looking devastated, Hagrid was waiting for them at the main gates.

"You're wanted in Dumbledore's office, 'Arry." he said

"Oh fuck, they've searched me trunk, haven't they?"

Hagrid nodded.

Harry felt his heart fall into his feet.

"Sirius, what the fuck am I going to fucking do?" he asked, in a panicky voice.

"You're going to have to go and face the music, Harry. Don't let them scare you with threats of Azkaban. You're not going there if I have anything to say about it. And I do. " Sirius told him.

"I'll 'ide yer, 'Arry. I won't let them send yer to Azkaban. Why you can 'ide wif me brother! Grawp won't 'urt yer none." Hagrid loyally volunteered.

Harry suddenly thought of Malfoy, of all people. If he could get a good enough sized chuck of cash into the little poof's hands, he thought for sure he could buy himself some fake papers, maybe a little polyjuice potion…

"I may have to take you up on that." Harry told Hagrid.

* * *

Harry had never felt so ashamed in his life as he did when he walked into Dumbledore's office.

The heads of all four houses were present, and all his contraband was neatly laid out on the Headmaster's desk.

Dumbledore looked sad, disappointed, dismayed and very upset.

That was the worst of all.

"Is this an Intervention, Headmaster?" Harry asked.

"Yes, Harry. All I can think to say right now is that I'm glad there is no Purple Doom in this collection. I'm sorry, Harry. We have failed you, shamefully." He said.

The Headmaster looked like he was about ready to burst into tears.

Harry had the sudden impulse to cry, himself, and literally fling himself at Dumbledore's' feet and say it was all his fault, and beg for another chance.

But, he was a man now, after all, as Snape was fond of pointing out to him, and decided to preserve what little dignity he had left.

Take it like a man.

"I suppose I'm expelled and off to Azkaban, aren't I?" Harry asked.

"Azkaban! Of course not! I think it would be best you were expelled, Mr. Potter, and sent to a treatment facility, but not jailed." Professor Sprout recommended.

"Not jailed? He performed an Unforgivable Curse this morning, without provocation!" Professor Flitwick huffed.

"But he was heavily under the influence! And he's just a boy. Not to mention that Azkaban is full of Death Eaters who would all love to get their hands, among other parts, on Harry Potter. I've been there. I know." Sirius protested.

"Oh. I hadn't thought of that. No, we don't want to impose a veritable death sentence on the boy. Or worse. But we must do something!" Professor Flitwick replied.

"Well, I, for one, agree with Professor Sprout that Harry should be sent to a treatment program, but suspended until he can prove he had his problem under control, not expelled." Professor McGonagall decided.

"Yes, Perhaps that might be best." Professor Flitwick agreed.

Harry looked at Snape.

His lip was twitching and he looked angry.

Harry tried not to panic.

_Snape's on our side, Dumbledore said so. Don't panic. After all he's not some kind of monster, is he? He wouldn't want to see me go off to Azkaban so I could get passed around like a three galleon whore to every Death Eater in the place. Oh God, I fucking hope not!_

Dumbledore turned to the head of Slytherin House.

"And what do you think, Severus?"

"I think that, with all due respect to my colleagues, I know a little bit more about the treatment of substance abuse than they do. Another thing I know, is that rehab centres, at least the ones this school can afford to send Potter to, would fall into two categories. The first would be some horrid and unhelpful New Age monstrosity where Potter would be locked up for thirty days with a lot of sanctimonious Ministry lawyers and tearful reformed Death Eaters, under the supervision of some witch who is even dizzier and less helpful than Sybil Trelawney. The others are virtual concentration camps where he'd be browbeaten and brainwashed, staffed by sadistic reformed Death Eaters that make Azkaban look like a vacation in Jamaica. Either way, all he would end up with is thirty days of sobriety, with no motive to remain so, and he will have missed a large portion of his classes in the year in which he is expected to take his NEWT's. No, I think what Potter needs is probation, and support from his home and his family. I have discussed this with Sirius, his godfather, and we feel as though this school is Potter's home and the teachers and students here his family. I think it is up to us, then, to assume the responsibility of helping him in his recovery. Which everyone in this room has been neglecting. You should all recall that I have been to this office several times over the past two years reporting Mr. Potter for drunkenness, erratic behaviour, for his class performance, and for fistfights and unauthorised hexing. Nothing was done. I have done what I could for him, even to the extent of carrying him to Gryffindor Tower and putting him to bed on several occasions. But I can't save the whole Wizarding World and Potter too on me own. There aren't enough hours in the day. Mr. Potter is our responsibility and although it is not all our fault he has degenerated into this condition, we have, as teachers, and as an institution, failed him. We can't simply shrug off that failure and pack him off to be someone else's problem." Snape pointed out.

"That's very true. I entrusted my godson's care to this school because I have been unable to look after him. It was my expectation, Albus, as his headmaster and Minerva, as his head of house that you would take care of him. Obviously, you didn't. All I can say is that I thank the gods Severus was looking out for Harry, as much as he could, given his extended duties. Or else Harry might not be standing here today for you to belatedly reprimand!" Sirius agreed.

"You're both right. I heard rumours about Harry getting into trouble, and I did see him looking a little tipsy after a few Hogsmeade weekends, but I never dreamed he was in so deep! Harry, I'm sorry, as your Head of House, I should have known better." Professor McGonagall apologised.

"Well I was doing me best to keep it all secret. And I really didn't get bad until after…"

Harry looked at Dumbledore and fell silent.

"Until you saw your Professor murder your Headmaster. Perhaps I bear the greatest responsibility of all, here. I have been so focused on this war, and its end and your part in it Harry, that I chose to ignore all the signs of your distress. I kept telling Severus that he was judging you by himself, and that things weren't as bad as he was making then out to be. I was wrong. Worse, I was the cause of the trauma that send you over the edge. I'm sorry, Harry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I will do my best, now, to help you in your recovery, as Headmaster, and as and old fool, who almost wasted the most precious life he had in his charge, and not just because you are the Boy Who Lived."

Tears were running down Dumbledore's face.

Harry didn't know what to say.

"To that end, Albus, we'll keep Potter here, on school grounds, for the first half of the term, except for supervised visits to WAND meetings in Hogsmeade. He'll be watched, and tutored and monitored. By me. Now, Mr. Potter has some charges pending against him by the Muggle authorities as well. Sirius and I have made an arrangement with those authorities that they will not take action against him for some rather serious offences if he obeys the terms of his probation. However, if Mr. Potter's grades have not improved and he hasn't stayed sober by mid-term, I'd say expulsion and turning him over to the Muggle authorise to face charges of assault, statutory rape, narcotics possession, indecent exposure, disorderly conduct and drunkenness in charge would an excellent way for Potter to learn what happens when you blow your last chance." Snape replied.

You could have knocked Harry over with a feather.

Snape was all for saving his arse.

"Severus, I think I like your idea the best. It gives Harry chance to redeem himself, but it also impose upon him how serious his offences are, and what their consequences will be if he doesn't take steps to reform himself." Dumbledore pronounced.

"That seems fair to me." McGonagall rejoined. "After all, Professor Snape is the local chairman of WAND, he would know more about this than we do."

"Professor Sprout and I are satisfied with that solution." Professor Flitwick announced.

"Very good, then. Harry, do you have anything to say for yourself?" Dumbledore asked

Sirius urged Harry forward.

Harry took two steps, and tried to speak, but a sickening feeling off vertigo overwhelmed him. There was a roaring in his ears, the room bean to spin around and around, and suddenly, the carpet was rushing up to meet him.

* * *

Alone in his bed at the infirmary that night, Harry cried a little.

They had him in a tiny little room all but himself, a bare little room with nothing in it but a bed and a chair.

He kept hoping someone would come to see him, and sit in the chair, and to that end he stayed up far into the night.

He was just falling asleep when he got a visit from one of his least favourite people.

"Good evening, Potter." Severus Snape greeted him, crisply.

"Hello, Professor Snape." Harry replied.

He was almost glad to see Snape, he really didn't want to be alone.

"I hope you're feeling better than you were in the Headmaster's office. The house elves had a lot of cleaning up to do after that performance."

"Did I throw up?"

"Yes, Potter. Copiously. But only after you passed out. You nearly choked to death right there on the floor, and lucky me, I'm the only member of the faculty who knows CPR. You have a very serious problem, Potter."

"I almost choked to death?"

"You were turning blue, and convulsing."

"And you saved my life?"

"Sirius assisted me. We saved you life. I have, at this point, lost track of the amount of times I have saved your life."

"Thanks, Professor Snape. And I know I have a serious problem. I'm a useless drunk and a filthy gutter junkie."

Harry wondered why Snape cared.

Snape was a mystery to him. There was no love lost between him and the Potions master, but, ever since he had first come to Hogwarts his father's old enemy and his mother's old friend had done much to help him; he'd even saved Harry's life on several occasions.

Now he was the only person to come and visit Harry at what was one of the lowest points of his life.

_Guilt. It was probably guilt_. Harry thought.

"Don't look so glum, Potter. Admitting that you have a problem is the first step on the road to solving it. Filth wipes off. And you are perfectly capable of making yourself useful. Don't thank me yet. In the coming weeks, what you are going to go through will make you unafraid of death, because Hell will hold no surprises for you. You will, of course, require extra help and tutoring in your major subjects, so I will keep an hour open, in my office, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from seven until eight in the evening. We will meet at the uual time in the morning, as well, except now we will meet every day. Considering the scholastic miracle you'll have to work if you really do want to be an auror, I suggest you show up, on time, every time. As you may recall, Potter, I am a member in long standing of the Hogsmeade Chapter of WAND. I am willing to be your sponsor. We have meetings every night at nine in the Shrieking Shack. As part of the terms of your probation, you are required to attend meetings at least twice a week, but if I were you, I'd go a little more often than that. "

Harry's mouth dropped opened.

WAND stood for Wizards Against Narcotics and Drinking. It was the wizarding world's answer to AA and NA.

"You, Professor Snape? I thought you were, like an honorary chairman, or something."

"I wish I was, Potter. Believe it or not, I bottomed out a lot lower than you have. But, I have been sober for as long as you have been alive. I quit cold turkey, and I advise you that there's no time like the present to do the same."

"I don't have to give up women as well, do I?" Harry found himself blurting out, much to his embarrassment.

"Certainly not. I haven't." Snape replied.

_Fucking right you haven't. I wonder if Dumbledore knows about him and his unofficial curriculum with his apprentice._

"I guess not." Harry commented wryly

Snape raised an eyebrow. Then he took a book out from under his robes and opened it.

"I think you should get some sleep, Potter. It's been quite a day."

Harry couldn't believe he'd sunk so low that they were having a professor watch him in the infirmary so that he didn't steal any of the drugs.

_Oh well_, Harry thought as he rolled over and too off his glasses, _at least I won't be alone._

Things became hazy for Harry over the next three days.

Someone was usually in the chair beside the bed.

Sometimes it was Sirius, sometimes it was Snape.

It could have been no one.

It could have been anyone.

All Harry was conscious of was a terrible pain.

It stemmed from the hot burning coal that crawled around in his guts like a virus, and chewed through him leisurely, eating his body alive with fire. His legs cramped and his arms, his muscles worked in spasms he couldn't control. His skin felt raw, like his whole body had been worked over with sandpaper soaked in corrosive acids. He scratched himself until he scraped off his skin, but he was still plagued by the burning itch.

It was like the Cruciatus Curse only there was no one you could beg to stop the pain, nothing you could do.

Sometimes it felt better just to scream, to scream and thrash around, and that's when whoever was in the chair would come and hold him down. Sometimes there were two sets of hands holding him down. When Harry was coherent enough to make out a face looking over him he'd beg the face to kill him.

If he'd had his wand he would have cursed himself to death.

He shook uncontrollably and his mouth was dry and he saw things that weren't there and his whole body itched and twitched and he threw up many times, until there was nothing left in his stomach and it as dry heaves and bitter green bile.

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

Harry knew he must have fallen asleep, because he woke up, and when he did, the pain was gone.

He was so happy the pain was gone that tears ran out of his eyes.

There were three chairs by the bed, and he saw three indistinct faces swimming around him.

Someone handed him his glasses and he put them on and saw Sirius, and Dumbledore and Snape.

"Is it over with?" he asked.

"Erm, the withdrawal is, Harry." Sirius assured him.

"Yes. That was the easiest part." Snape said.

"I don't care. I know I have to work hard to stay sober, but nothing could ever be as bad as that."

"How do you feel, Harry? It's been three days." Dumbledore asked.

"Terrible. But if I could get a glass of water and take a shower and change, I think I'd like to try and eat something. Maybe some soup. And then I want to go to class. I don't even want to think about this bed anymore. I have to get out of here." Harry said.

Dumbledore and Sirius looked at one another like they didn't know what to do.

"Treacher!" Snape suddenly shouted.

The Potion's Master's house elf appeared, promptly.

"Get Harry Potter a glass of pumpkin juice and a bowl of chicken soup. Take it to the Gryffindor common room."

"Treacher will! And Treacher will tell Dobby that Harry Potter is feeling better!" the house elf enthused.

"Can you get out of bed, Harry?" Sirius asked.

"Sure." Harry said.

He made it look like it was easy for him to get out of bed and put on his robe, even though every step gave him vertigo.

"Well, I'll just floo meself to the Common Room and eat that soup. Maybe I'll have Dobby bring me some tea. Erm, cheers!" He said.

He put on his glasses, and made for the hearth.

Harry had left behind the clean socks, y-fronts, jeans and tee shirt that had been waiting by his bed.

"It's a start." Sirius said.

"At least he put on his robe." Dumbledore agreed.

The corners of Snape's mouth trembled, as though he might laugh, but he didn't.

* * *

Harry didn't realise that his two best friends and his old lady had indeed forgiven him. They had all been to see him in the infirmary, but Harry had no idea.

Ginny kept coming back to Harry's bedroom and to the Common Room to look for him after every class, in the hopes he'd get well enough to be released, so she was the first one to see the new clean and sober Harry.

He looked pale and drawn, thin and quiet, absently banging his bare leg against his chair as he sat opposite two anxious house elves slurping down a bowl of soup, which they kept refilling.

When they saw Ginny, both Dobby and Treacher made themselves scarce.

Harry set a teacup in front of her, filled it and kept eating.

"I'm sorry." He said.

"That's good enough for me. Don't go through any of that awful soppy bullshit, Harry. I forgive you. Ron forgives you, too. We came to see you in the infirmary, but you were way the fuck out of it. Mind, if you fall off the wagon, I won't have to break up with you, and you won't have to worry about getting expelled or going off to the nick. I'll just put you out of your misery. How do you feel?"

"Sad, tired, itchy, happy, hungry, paranoid and horny." Harry reported.

"All at once?" Ginny snorted.

"Yeah. It's kind of a nice change from feeling drunk, high, hung over, or strung out." Harry replied.

He kept eating.

Ginny looked different. Her hair was redder. So were his bedcurtains.

The sun was very bright and hot which was good because the breeze blowing in the window under his robes was freezing. There was some bird outside singing at the top of its lungs and he could taste all the ingredients in the soup, as he thoughtfully chewed and swallowed each mouthful.

"This soup is fucking brilliant. And you look really good today, Ginny." He said.

Harry drank the last of the soup and pushed the bowl aside.

Ginny came around to his side of the table and sat in his lap.

"So do you, Horny Pothead." She told him.

Ginny took Harry's glasses off and put them in her pocket.

"What are you-"

"Shut up, you tosser. You know what I'm doing."

Ginny looked at her watch.

Ten minutes until Advanced Divination.

She quickly warded the doors, and pushed Harry's robes aside, pushed her robes adide, hitched up her skirt and got on the Firebolt.

"Holy shit!" Harry gasped. "Don't you even want me to kiss you?"

"Later. We've got class in eight minutes. Push back."


	4. Sobriety, Studying and Snape

**Chapter Four: Sobriety, Studying and Snape**

Everybody in the whole school knew about what happened with Harry, but nobody really said anything.

Even Malfoy kept his mouth shut, God only knew why.

Maybe it was because, in the first fortnight of classes, Harry was so obviously in such terrible shape.

Sobriety, not to put to fine a point on it, sucked donkey balls. For ine thing, all of the emotions that junk had crowded out of his mind were all back at once and clamouring to be heard. Sometimes he felt blissful as a baby in a cradle, nice to meet you, freaked to be here. Other times the shame of the things he had done and said weighed on him like a millstone in his chest.

And all the time he had a new friend, one, he had the suspicious feeling who would be around for awhile, his new buddy Mr. Jones. Sometimes, though, the Jones was the only thing that got Harry out of bed on these uneasy days of clean shirts and regular morning.

He was beginning to understand what Snape meant at the WAND meetings when he said that sometimes the Jones was the only thing that kept you alive.

Surprisingly, Harry's new least favourite class was one he had always liked before, Defence Against the Dark Arts. For one thing, Professor Crich might have been a hotshot auror, but he was a worse teacher than Gilderoy Lockheart, which was saying something.

For another, Harry didn't like Professor Crich. And it wasn't just the way he ogled Ginny, although Harry didn't like that either. If he'd been a normal bloke Harry wouldn't have minded if Ginny didn't mind, but there was something unpleasant in the way Crich looked at women, in general.

Like he was some kind of sick sex case perverty motherfucker of some sort.

"If that goddam new professor ogles my tits one more time, I'll knock him on his arse." Ginny complained.

"Wait until I'm better, Ginny. I'll hold your coat." Harry told her.

"No, no, Harry. We'll do it together." Ginny told him, squeezing his hand.

Ginny's ordeal in her first year culminating in Harry saving her life in the chamber of Secrets could have had two effects on her. It could have turned her into a frightened little rabbit, or make her determined that no one would ever get the best of her again. In Ginny's case, it was the latter rather than the former. While she was still in the infirmary after Harry got her out of the Chamber, she promised herself she'd never be that stupid again, or that weak. The next time Voldemort or his kind came for her, or Harry, she was going to be damn good and ready.

Ginny was the champion fighter in the Weasley family, and had quite a reputation at Hogwarts as someone whose bad side you never wanted to be on. Her father was fond of saying "Our Ginny isn't just pretty as a diamond, she's as hard as one, as well."

For one thing, nobody made fun of Ron within earshot of Ginny. She was one of the best fighters in the school, and one of the best duellers in Dumbledore's Army. Ginny loved a good fight, whether it was with wands or fists. Either way, if you were her opponent, you were likely to get creamed. If she was in a good mood, she'd beat the shit out of you, and if she was in a bad mood…well it took once Madame Pomfrey three days to sort out all the things she did to Crabbe before he could even get his wand out from under his sleeve.

Like Harry, Ginny wanted to be an auror, but her pugilistic performances, her academic excellence that led her to be able to skip a year in Defence Against the Dark Arts, Potions, and Occlumency and her skill with a wand weren't enough to satisfy Ginny that she was ready for the war she knew they were all enmeshed in. She was a trained animagus who was once suspended from school for a week regarding an incident where a huge lioness with a reddish tinge to her tawny coat chased Draco Malfoy to the tallest tower of Hogwarts castle.

Ginny was like a lion. She was fierce, and strong, and hot-tempered, but she had a good and valiant heart.

As they waked into Professor Crich's classroom, Ginny fairly growled at the man.

"Good morning, Miss Weasley." Professor Crich said, and Harry noticed him staring right at Ginny's rack.

Not that you could miss same, but he wasn't even pretending to talk to her face.

"Me face is up here, Professor." Ginny told him.

Professor Crich only laughed and told Ginny to take her seat.

She sat down with Ron and Harry sat on the other side of him.

"Did you see the way he looks at Ginny? I'll kill the bastard." Harry said.

"Brilliant! I'll hold your coat. The man's filthy!" Ron agreed

"That's a good word for him. Filthy. And he's fucking creepy as well. I dunno what some of these birds see in him. And I don't like the way he looks at Ginny. Like he wants to eat her up. Literally. I mean I can take it if she goes around with other blokes, but I wouldn't put it past old Crich. I think he's some kind of weird sadistic pervert. He seems the type to chop somebody into little bits and stick them in his bleeding freezer. " Harry agreed

Before Ron could reply, Malfoy piped in with his two cents.

"It's no wonder you don't mind, Potter. If you punched every boy in this school who slept with your Ginny, you'd be up to your knees in broken tee-"

Malfoy was likely going to say "teeth" but Ginny whirled on him like lightening with her wand and he was summarily vomiting slugs all over the table.

"Chew on that, you toerag!" she spat.

Crabbe's hand shot up.

"Yes, Mr. Crabbe, I see. Take Mr. Malfoy to the Infirmary. Ms. Weasley, that was a very good example of a quick defence. Now let's all open our books to page 25, and we'll study a few more charms that will stop an opponent in his, or it's tracks but without harming them seriously." Professor Crich responded.

"If he thinks he's getting a blow job or a cheap feel for that, he's got another think coming." Ginny muttered.

For the first time all week, Harry actually laughed, and Ron laughed with him.

"Then again, we'll probably end up holding Ginny's coat." He laughed.

"And she'd probably have him in bits in a freezer." Ron agreed.

The door opened and Hermione rushed in, conspicuous by her lateness.

"It's not like you to be late, Miss Granger." Professor Crich, commented.

"Sorry, Professor, I was in the library and I lost track of time." Hermione explained.

"You'll have to attend detention with me, this evening." Crich told her.

Hermione went a whiter shade of pale.

"But Professor, I have my work to do for Professor Snape. I won't have time to do my homework and get some sleep if I have to attend detention. Sometimes Professor Snape keeps me at work for hours."

Harry swallowed a laugh.

"He keeps her on the job half the night." He whispered to Ginny.

Professor Crich seemed to see some humour in Hermione's protest, as well.

"Well, in light of Professor Snape's relentless driving of you, Miss Granger, I'll let your lateness go, this time. But, if you're late again, you'll be spending some of those hours with me, as well. You can take your seat, now." He replied.

She sat down with Ron and Ginny and Harry.

"What's withdrawal really like, Harry?" Ron asked.

"I'd rather vomit slugs for a week." Harry replied.

"If you give my sister a round of applause you will be." Ron rejoined.

They all chuckled into their books.

Except Hermione. She wasn't laughing and she looked distracted.

It made Harry wonder if Snape had a free period, and what the hell she had been doing in the library.

"Doing a little research with Professor Snape?" Harry asked.

"Shut up, Harry." Hermione hissed.

* * *

Snape noticed that Granger was unusually quiet that evening as they worked, and she was distracted enough to spill a solution of larks' tongues in aspic all over the table.

As she cleaned up, Snape took off his lab robe and hung it up.

"That's enough for today, Granger. Tell me what's bothering you."

Hermione hung up her lab robe, fiddled with her tie, pulled at the hem of her shirt, and smoothed out her skirt.

"You haven't even changed your clothes. You never come to the lab in your uniform, not since before you made me your business proposal. It's that bastard Crich, isn't it? He's been at you, hasn't he?" Snape snarled.

"I wouldn't say he's been at me. But I won't go to detention with him, Snape. I won't. There's something about the way he looks at me and all those double entendres. He's got this sort of Fred West look in his eye. I won't go."

"You're fucking well right you won't go! You've never had a detention in your life! You're the goddamn Head Girl for fuck's sake? What does Crich want to give you a detention for?"

"He says the next time I'm late…"

"Oh, the next time you're late! If you happen to walk in as the gongs are sounding he'll give you a detention so he can get you alone and back you into a corner and threaten to bite you to get you to lift up your skirt for him! Well, fuck him! I know what he's up to! I told Albus not to let that fucking degenerate teach here, with all these young girls about! He's a real sick fuck, Crich is! He claims he's reformed, he claims he was forced to do what he did at those Dark Revels, but I've seen that cunt in action and he looked like he was having a bloody good time to me! He's doing it just to spite me, you know. I'll kill him! If he touches you, I will kill him! By the eye of Balor, I will! I'll kill him with me bare hands! I'll fucking tear that werewolf bastard limb from limb! I'll bear him to death with his own arms!" Snape raged.

Hermione had never seen him so furious.

His face was red, the veins in the side of his head and his neck bulged and his black eyes looked positively shark-like. He pounded the table as he raved and spit flew out of his mouth along with his angry words.

"Snape, calm down. You can't just go and kill another teacher. At the very least you'll lose your job. Please, Severus. You'll go to Azkaban for life on murder. And we need you here. We need you for the war." Hermione reminded him.

"If he gives you a detention, don't go. Under no circumstances. After classes, you report directly to the Headmaster. If Crich ever approaches you in a threatening way, I want you to tell me, immediately."

"You won't just kill him?"

"No. I won't just kill him."

Hermione didn't believe Snape for a second.

She knew him better than that.

* * *

Much later that night, Hermione was just putting her books away after she and Harry finished up their research project in Herbology.

As Harry was leaving, Snape flooed into her room.

He took one look at Harry, erupted in a stream of cursing, dropped the bag he'd been carrying onto her bed, picked Harry up by the front of his tee shirt and hoisted him into the air.

"Just what the fuck do you think you're doing in here, Potter?" he demanded

Snape had this sort of one hundred percent paranoid junkie lunatic expression on his face that made Harry quite nervous indeed. He was a strong young man, with the constitution of an ox, and he could hold his own in the most brutal of street fights and bar brawls.

But Snape was holding him about a foot off the ground with one hand, and a murderous look on his face, and Harry was absolutely terrified.

"I never touched her! We was only studying. What do you think I am, crazy?" he wheedled.

"Snape! Put him down!" Hermione cried.

They ignored her.

"Yes, Potter, I think you're crazy. I know you're crazy. I know what it's like, getting clean and feeling like there's a tree growing out of your crotch in every waking second of your life." Snape accused him, fairly snarling.

"I wouldn't dare, Professor. You're my sponsor. Hermione's your, erm, apprentice. I wouldn't dare. Please, put me down."

Snape put him down.

"Fine. See you tomorrow at seven. Five points from Gryffindor for being our of your room after hours. Good night, Potter."

"Right. Cheers." Harry said.

He didn't give a shit about the five points and he got the fuck out of there.

Something had Snape's y-fronts all in a twist and Harry didn't fancy sticking around and finding out what.

"Snape, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you out of your mind?" Hermione demanded.

Snape wasn't paying any attention.

He was busy spraying something glittery all around the doors, and secretively opening vials and sprinkling their contents around the room. Then he went back to the door and stared mumbling things in Latin and waving his wand in specific and frenetic patterns.

"Put this on, Hermione. And don't ever take it off, for any reason."

Hermione looked at what he'd handed her.

It was a pendant of a silver serpent with green turquoise eyes wrapped around a black onyx sphere with a pentacle etched on it in silver, on a pewter chain.

This was not just a lovely gift, it was a powerful charm for warding off werewolves, infused with no little degree of Snape's personal magicks.

"You don't think…"

"You bet your arse I do! I know Oliver Crich, I know him better than anyone at this school. He's got it in for me and he's got the hots for you. I've doused this room in silver and wolfsbane, and I changed the metals in the door to solid iron."

Snape produced a vial and a dagger in a leather sheath with a strap around it on Hermione's desk.

"The vial contains essence of wolfbane suspended in dragon's blood. I want you to wear a drop or two of it every day. And I want you to strap this dagger to your thigh whenever you leave this room. The blade is silver and the hilt is iron; it was tempered in wolfsbane suspended in dragon's blood. If he tries anything with you, that knife is just as good as a silver bullet. It works best if you can stab him through his brain or his heart. Aim for the eye. Now get your things ready for tomorrow. It'll take about a day for all my work to take effect and I don't want you alone in this room, unprotected. You'll be staying with me tonight." Snape finished.

Hermione was used to her life being in danger, and she was used to Snape instructing her on how to survive.

"Let me get a few things together." She said.

Snape lit a cigarette.

He was considering apologising to Potter, at some point.

* * *

The thing Harry really couldn't wrap his brains around was why Snape was showing such an interest in him. Could it be guilt? Did he fell somehow responsible for the demise of his best friend, and was trying to make it up to her son? Or maybe he was guilty that it was his supposed act of murder that put Harry over the edge. Or maybe he was just helping Harry out the way he would help out any student who was an addict, in his position as Chairman of WAND.

Maybe, Harry thought, I remind him a little of himself when he was my age. Drunk and fucked up and going down the wrong path. Or maybe he realises that without me Voldemort lives on forever and he can never be free.

But Snape was a Slytherin, and not just that, he was a Slytherin's Slytherin. He had to have some selfish motive for helping Harry.

But what?

If he wanted to know the answer to that question, he had to find out more about the Potions Master's life and his background. Harry also knew, however, he couldn't just come right out and ask Snape to have a little chat with him about his childhood and the like. Having spent so much time with Snape, Harry knew exactly what would happen if he tried.

The wicked old screw would look down his long neb at Harry, from a blue haze of smoke, cock his eyebrow and say something withering, insulting and sarcastic that would make Harry feel like he was the most loathsome moronic wanker in the known universe.

Harry had already tried at one of his tutoring sessions to talk to the Professor like he was, well, like a regular bloke, just to see what would happen.

It hadn't gone well

"Erm, Professor Snape?"

"Yes, Potter?"

Snape was ostensibly reading a large, boring tome.

Harry could see the edge of this month's _Bad Witch _poking just over the top.

Harry was a regular subscriber to _Bad Witch_, himself. He liked it better than _Playwizard. Bad Witch_ usually had birds in it that looked like real girls, and you couldn't see more at a gynaecologist's office than you could between the covers of _Bad Witch_.

Randy old Scouser bastard.

"Did you get that Led Zeppelin tee shirt when they played Hogwarts?"

"Yes, Potter."

"Did you meet them?"

"Yes, Potter."

_Jimmy Page and I doubled up on Arabella McMasters. She had the whole show. Even the roadies. Good old Arabella…_

Harry looked gobsmacked.

"You knew Jimmy Page? One of the Seven Guitar Wizards?"

"I still know him."

He realised Harry was waiting for him to continue.

"What do you think this is, Potter, True Confessions? Mojo Magazine's Letters to the Editor?" Snape blasted him.

"Well, you are my WAND sponsor and we're supposed to have, you know some kind of friendly relationship with our sponsors. Maybe if I knew something about you I wouldn't…"

Harry's voice trailed off.

"Hate me so much? Think I was such a miserable, snarky old bastard?" Snape prompted.

Harry tried not to laugh.

He was beginning to suss out the Potion's Mater's wicked, sarcastic sense of humour.

"Well I can't hardly hate you anymore after you've saved me arse, but, yeah. I mean if I'm supposed to come to you and talk to you if I've lost me sobriety or I think I might lose me sobriety, well, I mean if I think you're an ogre, and a wicked old screw, I'm not going to want to, am I?"

Snape raised an eyebrow.

"So I'm a wicked old screw, am I, Potter? I should take ten points from Gryffindor for that, but I did invite it upon meself. If I were you, I wouldn't be such a nosey little shit. The more you know about me, the less likely you are to want to make nice with me. Now, get back to your studies."

After that cheery exchange, Harry decided he'd have to find out what he could from people who were close to Snape.

Well, people who were still alive, not his sworn enemies, and not in Azkaban.

He began with Hermione.

They were studying for Defence Against the Dark Arts together, and Harry attempted to be very casual.

"So, Hermione, you've spent a good bit of time with Snape since 5th year. What's he really like?"

Hermione closed her book.

She was, as Snape had trained her to be, immediately suspicious.

"Why do you want to know?' she demanded.

"Well, he's my WAND sponsor, then, isn't he? I'm supposed to go to him if I can't keep me shit together, right? And how am I supposed to trust him if I don't know anything about the man?" Harry protested.

"What's to know? Snape may be cold, and brutal, and snarky, but he's a good man, really. He's got a wicked sense of humour, good taste in music and so on, and once you get past his rotten personality, he can be a good…friend. But you have to gain his trust, and work on getting past his rotten personality. Which I can't do for you. I suggest you start with reading his entry in _Hogwarts, A History_. Now, let's get back to work." Hermione replied.

Later, in the library, Harry took her advice.

Snape certainly was stingy with the personal details. Some of the other professors' entries lasted for pages, but Snape's was quite short.

_Severus Snape was born on January 9, 1959, in Liverpool, England to Eileen Prince, a witch of the Carpathian Princes' blood, and Tobias Snape, a Muggle sailor. He grew up in Spinner's End, a working-class neighbourhood on the Mersey River. _

_The future Potions Master, like his mother, was always a good student, considered one of the brightest wizards in his year. After an adolescence troubled by addiction and associations with the Dark Arts, Severus Snape studied under the Seven Guitar Wizards, took an apprenticeship at Hogwarts and became a Potions Master. He began teaching at Hogwarts in 1981._

_Professor Snape holds the patent on the Skele-Gro potion, which he synthesised during his studies with the Seven Guitar Wizards. He is the Head of Slytherin House, the Chairman of the Hogsmeade Chapter of WAND, and works with the in and outpatient rehab centre at St. Mungos. He is currently working on a potion that would reverse the effects of fatal or mentally crippling doses of Purple Doom, and also, in smaller doses, aid addicts in conquering their dependence on the dreaded drug._

It only took up half a page.

Having got nothing out of General Granger and little from Snape's bio, Harry's next port of call was a Saturday afternoon with Dumbledore, in his office.

He knew he could count on the Headmaster having more to say.

Over tea, cakes and pleasantries, Harry asked Dumbledore the same question he had asked Hermione.

The Headmaster's eyes twinkled merrily, and he laughed.

For quite some time.

"I'm sorry, Harry, but you might as well ask me what is the sound of one hand clapping? I've known Severus since he was ten years old, and I haven't the foggiest idea what he is really like. He's a very complicated man. He was even a very complicated boy. I can only give you dry facts, Harry. They won't tell you what you want to know."

"Facts would be something, Headmaster."

"Have you read Severus' entry in _Hogwarts, A History_."

"Yeah. No wonder he has such good taste in music." Harry marvelled.

Dumbledore chuckled a little.

He had known the august Seven Guitar Wizards when they were boys at Hogwarts, unpopular outcasts the lot of them.

Just like Severus.

"I never thought of it that way. But let me fill in some of the blanks for you. Severus came from an unhappy home, far unhappier than yours, Harry. He was taken into care by the Ministry during his first year, and I became his guardian. I did the best I could to guide him in the right direction, but he became a very angry young man. Admittedly, he was abused by his parents, and then an outcast here at Hogwarts, but that does not excuse his becoming s a known alcoholic, addict, drug-pushing thug, and all around bad-tempered, violent Death Eater. By the time Severus decided to turn his life around, no college would have him and no one wanted to give him a second chance. He was, unfortunately, penniless and bereft. His parents would have taken him in, but they were still living in Spinner's End in the same ramshackle hovel, mired in their addictions. Hogwarts Severus' home and he had no other place to go after he turned 18 and was no longer in care with the Ministry. I would have continued to provide for him, and find him a place to live here while I tried to get him into university, but Severus was a proud man, too proud to take charity from me after he was finally on his own. He made an arrangement to work with Mr. Filch, cleaning toilets and scraping gum out from under desks. He surprised me when I found out he'd made an arrangement with the Seven Guitar Wizards. Still, most of them are at least half-Muggle, and had recently sobered up, too, and although none of them were Death Eaters, Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore are both Dark Wizards. And they were all, like Severus had been, outcasts all their lives. He studied under them for a year, and retuned to Hogwarts with a Potions Master certificate signed by all seven of them. I was happy and proud to grant Severus an apprenticeship and, well you know the rest. Severus had had a very hard life, Harry. He came from deplorable circumstances, and got himself into even more deplorable circumstances that would have caused most people to simply give up. Not Severus. He brought himself up to the position he has today the old- fashioned way. He sweat blood for it. I find Severus a very admirable man. It's a pity he doesn't make his achievements known, and hides his many good points behind his few bad ones. But, I'm only his father by law, so why should he listen to me?"

Dumbledore shook his head, and ate another cake.

"Does that help, Harry?"

Harry frowned.

"No. The more I know about Snape, the less sense he makes to me." Harry replied.

"Now you're on the right track." Dumbledore confirmed.

* * *

More confused than ever, Harry came to his next tutoring session bursting with the need to confide in his WAND sponsor about the anxieties, pressures, anger and frustration that were welling up inside him.

He knew he had to confide in Snape, but, didn't know how to begin.

Close to the end of the session, Harry began to blurt out trivialities.

"So, I heard that you studied with the Seven Guitar Wizards. Can you introduce me?"

No sooner had he spoken than Harry regretted it.

He'd made himself sound like some sort of sub-moronic fanboy.

Snape gave him a withering look from behind the film of bluish smoke that wreathed his head.

"We'll see what your grades and your NEWT's are like, Potter. I'm not going to introduce a blithering idiot to one of the most powerful cabals in the Wizarding World."

Snape pulled out his packet of English Ovals, and lit one on the end of his wand.

"Now get back to work. You've only got fifteen more minutes to finish that assignment, and then we'll have to work overtime. I don't like working overtime."

_No, it cuts into your free time shagging the arse off Hermione, doesn't it? Of course it also cuts into me own free time for getting me end off. I just can't think. If I could SMOKE, then I could THINK. Wait. Snape smokes like a house afire. No harm in asking him, after all._

"Professor, may I smoke? I work better when I can smoke." Harry asked, desperately.

Snape pushed the ashtray over towards him.

"So do I." he said.

In the next five minutes, Harry smoked three cigarettes and finished the assignment in question, perfectly.

Snape examined the contents of his parchment.

"Very good, Mr. Potter. Too bad you can't smoke in class. Not that you can really smoke anywhere in this place, anymore. Down here in the dungeons and in those awful fucking smoking lounges full of children sneaking smokes. Little bastards. I mean, there's a bleeding war going on, in which we could all be dead tomorrow and these fools are worried about secondhand bloody smoke. I still smoke wherever I want to, and I'd like to see somebody try and fucking stop me." Snape said, sourly.

The professor had opened a little window of conversation and Harry dove through it.

"I know! I don't pay those fucking smoking regulations any mind. They can suck my dick and choke on it, as far as I'm concerned. Erm, sorry professor. But you know what I mean. I always open our window and smoke out of it. Ron complains about the cold, or the heat depending on the time of year, but I can't help it. I have to smoke. Especially now that I'm sober. God, being sober really sucks, sometimes. If I couldn't smoke , I think I'd go on a mad rampage and start killing people. "

Harry couldn't believe what he'd just told his professor.

He lit another cigarette and took a long drag, despairing of what Snape would say next.

"Well, Potter, as much as I would enjoy someone going on a wild rampage and bumping off 20 or 30 of these pinheads and wankers and mouth-breathers to really put the fear of gods into the rest of them, we can't have you doing that. If it was up to me, mind you, I'd give you a fucking medal for it. But, I don't think the law would look so kindly upon it. So, as long as you are in my office, you may feel free to smoke. As long as you're not planning on bumming fags off me."

Harry nodded his thanks. That wasn't at all what he expected Snape to say.

Was it possible that he really could understand what Harry was going through?

"Spit it out, Potter. I know there's something you have to get off your chest. First, no matter what kind of black-hearted tirade you embark on, it won't be worse than anything I've said or done. And second, as your sponsor, everything you say to me is in the strictest confidence. So, let's have it, then."

"May I swear without having house points taken from me?"

"When I'm acting as your sponsor, Potter, it has nothing to do with Hogwarts. Curse away."

Snape took out his wand and cast a Shielding Spell on his office. He had the feeling Harry was really going to erupt.

Harry took a long drag on his cigarette and when he exhaled the smoke, a rant that had been welling up in him for many years came pouring out.

"For once in me life, I couldn't fucking well agree with you more! About the killing spree, I mean. More than half of these yellow bastards, they deserve killing! I'm telling you, Snape, if I started killing these useless pricks there wouldn't be many of them left! Twenty or thirty, my arse! I'd like to scrub two, three, four hundred of 'em! Oh Harry, you're the boy who lived, save our lily white arses! We're not going to lift a fucking finger to help because we're too scared. Help me, help me,I think you're really weird and I don't like you, but I'm a useless chickenshit and you're the Chosen One, it's your job, in accordance with the motherfucking prophecy! Prophecy, me arse! They never listen to you, do they? Oh Harry, you must be crazy, Voldemort is dead. You mustn't tell lies! Tell lies! I'll lie to you, you cocksuckers! They don't care about me, Harry Potter. They don't even appreciate what I've done for them! All of 'em. Especially me fellow students. Always staring at me. Look Harry's drunk again. Hee hee hee.. Goddamn witches! You think you're fucking them, but what's really happening is they're fucking you over. Pass you around like a breath mint. Give you the crabs. Give you the clap. Give you the goddam herp and the syph and the leaping dragoniferous crotch rot! Give you bad dope and then scream at you for puking on their carpets. But nobody cares! Nobody fucking cares! Only my friends. The rest of them, I see them staring at me. Isn't Harry funny? Oh he became a junkie. For shame! How will he save us now? Fuck you! Save yourselves! I'm doing this for me and for my mother and my father and my friends. Otherwise I wouldn't give a fuck what Voldemort did. I'd become a bloody Death Eater and line them all up and kill 'em one by one. Without a wand, either! I'd like to do it with a fucking carving knife! I'm so angry! I'm so angry all the fucking time! That's why I used to get high and get drunk. Now I'm sober I'm so angry, I. well, let me tell you this, Sanpe, I don't know what I could do, but when I do it and I do mean when, it's not going to be fucking pretty!" Harry roared.

He emitted a long steam of obscenities and punched the wall so hard he cracked the stone.

The pain in his hand quickly deflated his rage and he sunk back into his seat.

"Broke your hand, did you?" Snape asked.

"Yes." Harry managed.

"I see you cracked the stone. All the other cracks you see in the stones come from me punching the wall. Because I know exactly how you feel, Mr. Potter, except I've been feeling that way since before you were born. Mind, I can't tell you you're wrong, because you are abso-fucking-lutely right. Most people are yellow bastards, or complete fucking sheep to the slaughter, or yobboes not worth the powder it would take to blow them to hell. You're absolutely right about the load of fucking toerags. They do not care about you, and they are too terrified to do anything about Tom fucking Riddle. Chickenshit yellow conformist motherfuckers. Really, I think Muggles are far less spineless than witches and wizards. They don't have magic so they have to have balls. Which is why I disagree completely with Voldemort. He's such a fucking berk. Mind you, with a few exceptions, most purebloods have no balls, and a lot of fucking money. The two things seem, to go together. You look at a witch or wizard who really does something and they're usually at least a quarter blood. That said, a good portion of Muggles, are spineless gits as well, they just can't afford to be quite as chickenshit and yellow and easily led as your average wealthy pureblood prick. But you do owe Voldemort for Lily, and to save the people you love he hasn't killed yet. Here's my advice to you. Forget the rest of the world. Let them go fuck themselves. Do it for you and yours and you won't feel so much like killing everyone. Why should you do them the favour of ending their useless, pointless. miserable little lives? Let them live and die of their own accord. That's the worst thing that could happen to them. A hundred and fifty years of cowardice and mediocrity is a far worse punishment than death. Do what you have to do for yourself, Potter. That's how I've managed to get through the last 18 years, sober and homicide-free. And whatever you do, don't try to quit smoking. You'll end up going on a crime spree from here to the North Sea. Mind, if you decide to go, I have a fast car. I'll drive." Snape replied.

Harry couldn't believe it.

That was some really good advice.

"Use the hearth and floo yourself to the infirmary, Potter. _Episkey_ isn't going to cover that hand." Snape advised.

"Thanks for the advice, Professor."

"Go get your hand fixed, Potter. And whatever you do, don't internalise your rage. That's the worst thing you can do to yourself. Let it out. If people don't like it, fuck them. If they want you to save them, they can't insist you always be polite about it. Take the occasional fit. If you need someone to listen. I'm available. I always enjoy having a nice homicidal chat with a fellow misanthrope. And, in understand Miss Weasley has quite a temper and she's rather bloodthirsty. I'm sure she'd sympathise, as well." Snape finished.

_More good advice. Perhaps the wicked old screw wasn't so bad after all._

_Or perhaps years of doping and boozing and hard-living and battle have turned me into a wicked old screw, as well_. Harry thought.

"Potter?"

"Yes, Professor Snape?"

"I'm sorry if I humiliated you, picking you up and shaking you the way I did the other night. There is a threat to Miss Granger's life in this school, and I was preoccupied with taking care of it."

"It's that fucking werewolf Crich, isn't it?" Harry snarled.

"Yes. Has he been at Miss Weasley, too?"

"You should see the way he looks at my Ginny! I think he's some kind of sick freak. If I had a silver bullet, Professor Snape, I'd…"

Snape stood up.

"Yes, Potter, I believe you would. Then I'll have to take the same measures to see to it she's protected, as well. Don't worry. Crich will make a mistake. And when he does…"

Snape let his voice trail off.

He lit another cigarette, and smiled to himself as they walked through the hallways

Harry didn't dare.

* * *

Harry didn't tell anybody about his fit of rage, or his broken hand. He did take Snape's advice and vent to Ginny. She was still dead chuffed about her silver dagger, and Gryffindor charm, and the idea that she might get to kill a werewolf.

Spoiling for some action, herself, Ginny really seemed to understand and recommended to Harry that he needed to go out and get himself in a good fight.

Ginny loved to fight.

It was her second favourite thing to do to relieve stress. Come to think of it, sex and violence were two of the main things she and Harry had in common, really.

Harry could even remember the moment when he realised he was in love with her.

They were at the Hog's Head, in the middle of a huge brawl. Harry had just broken a chair over some big bastard, when he saw Ginny, standing on top of the bar, her eye blacked and her lip bloodied, robes ripped.

She beat her chest and roared and flung herself at the last three wizards standing.

They weren't standing for long.

But Ginny never picked fights. Or looked for them. That's why Harry didn't invite her on his errand to a dive pub in Knockturn Alley. He sat at the bar and had several tonic waters and lime, until some poor unfortunate soul began to taunt him about his failure to kill Voldemort, that WAND was for faggots and losers and that harry was both.

Harry put his glasses in his pocket and laid into the taunter and several of his friends with a vengeance.

He managed to hold off five of them, but when a few more joined the fray Harry began to repent his decision.

That was when the cavalry arrived.

Ginny launched herself into the fray in a red blur of bloodlust and fury, and she and Harry made short work of about eight full-grown wizards.

Unfortunately, someone called the aurors, but Sirius showed up and hustled Harry and Ginny out the door before they could come.

"You lousy sons of bitches! Lemme go, Sirius! I'm not done with these fucking cunts, yet! Get up off that floor and fight like men. You yellow bastards!"

Harry's glasses were broken in his pocket, his nose was broken, there was blood streaming from it and his lip, his robes were torn half off and he had broken six of his ten knuckles.

Eight wizards, however were beaten as badly as Harry and cowering in fear, not daring even to touch their wands.

Sirius ignored Harry's raving and Ginny's literal roars of anger and dragged them out the door. He was hardly able to do it; there was an unbelievable amount of strength in the young wizard's wiry body, and in Ginny's small, compact form.

"All right, you two, that's enough, for fuck's sake! The aurors are coming, Harry! You are on probation, remember?"

Harry remembered. He wasn't supposed to be outside the castle.

"Oh shit, Sirius!"

"I'll take you back. And I'll cover over it. Just this once. Whose big idea was it for you to pick a bar fight?"

"Mine." Harry said.

"Uh-huh. And you thought you'd bring Miss Weasley just for fun. Honestly, if this is what turns the two of you on, you need help." Sirius snapped.

"Harry didn't invite me along. I followed him out of the castle. I just knew he was up to something. And not that it's any of your business, but I don't need to kick somebody's arse to get turned on. If that was the case the aurors would have to follow me everywhere to pick up the dead." Ginny retorted.

Sirius kept a straight face.

"Just don't ever do anything this stupid again. Both of you."

He took Harry and Ginny directly to Snape, who patched them up with potions.

They wanted him this was the last time they'd let him slide.

After Ginny and Harry went back to Gryffindor Tower, Snape and Sirius had a fit of hysterical laughter that left them both breathless and in pain, with tears streaming out of their eyes.

"Look at us, Snape, we're actually having a laugh, together."

"Well, Black, I can get along with you much better since you went to Azkaban. The whole experience has made you more like me." Snape quipped.

"We'd best get over to the Hog's Head and see if we can get Malfoy to spread a little money around the situation. He's always there on Wednesdays, drinking butterbeers with Crabbe and Goyle. Pay those lowlifes to forget who beat the shit out of them."

"I'm a little short this week." Snape protested.

"Let Luke buy. He's loaded." Sirius suggested.

* * *

Lying in his bed that night, Harry realised Professor Snape was right. He had to forget about the world in general and worry about himself and the people he loved. Or else he was going to drive himself barmy.

He also decided to start going to WAND meetings nightly.

That might help him get whatever it was out of his system.


	5. The Elders' WAND

**Chapter Five: The Elders' WAND **

Harry was combing his hair for his evening out at the WAND meeting when it occurred to him just how pathetic he was.

Whatever happened to swigging warming translucent Scotch that was older than he was, and toking up some high grade ganja as he prepared for a hot night with the witch or witches of his choice? What happened to weeklong debauches with Jack Daniels and big rocks of smack like sugar candy, writing in the air with his wand in florescent green fire?

What the fuck was he, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, doing combing his hair to go to a WAND meeting with Snape of all people?

An occasion where he could swill tepid butterbeer, munch of half-stale biscuits and sandwiches, and get hit on by starving ex-junkie witches whose stringy tits hung halfway to their bony emaciated knees?

The only good thing about being around Snape so much was that he didn't care if you were in a bad mood and didn't say anything to him and looked pissed off, because that was generally the state the randy old Scouser was in himself.

When Harry left the Gryffindor common room, digging in his pockets for his packet of fags, Snape was waiting for him, smoking furiously.

He just started walking when he saw Harry, without saying a word to him, and Harry was glad of it.

They passed a couple snogging in a dark corner.

"_Lumos_!" Snape barked, extending his wand.

The two fourth years jumped away from each other, and froze with fear.

"I hate to interrupt you lovebirds with the cold hand of reality, but have either of you taken advatange of the free contraceptives that we so generously offer you randy little twits?" Snape inquired.

"N-n-n-o, p-p-p-professor." The boy managed.

"Then I suggest you do. Get yourselves to the infirmary, now. If you can show me a note from Madame Pomfrey that you've done as I say, then it will only be five points from Ravenclaw for each of you. Otherwise, twenty-five. Well? Go! And then right back to your quarters, or I'll make it fifty apiece!" Snape instructed, sternly.

The two fourth years made tracks.

"I'm sorry, Potter. Was I interrupting you waxing nostalgic about the days of your youth before you were corrupted by sex, dope, and cheap thrills?' Snape asked.

"I don't think I can tell you what I was thinking, Professor Snape." Harry confessed.

Snape raised an eyebrow.

"It's after hours, Potter. I'll allow it."

"I was just thinking she's a pretty little witch, and that kid doesn't look like he even knows which hole to stick it in; it's a shame to have a wanker like that pop her cherry. Now if it was me, I'd give her a first time she wouldn't forget." Harry mused.

"You're 18 now, Potter. Time to lay off the jailbait. Sixteen is young enough for anybody. I know it's a hell of a way to spend a Friday night, but soon your probation will be over, and I'm sure Miss Weasley will wait up for you."

"What do you do for fun, Professor?" Harry asked.

"I watch Monty Python re-runs, I read books, I eat good food, I go to the Muggle local, I listen to records, and I'm a Sex Magus of the Third Degree…" Snape began.

Harry tried not to look interested.

"…and you can formalise and complete your very unofficial training after you graduate. I know a witch who would be glad to take you on as an Acolyte. In the meantime, don't try anything complicated." He finished

Harry looked at his feet as they made their way along, and didn't say much else.

Sex, food, rock and roll, and cheap thrills.

It just might work.

* * *

Harry was always surprised to see so many familiar faces in attendance almost as regular as his on the benches at the Shrieking Shack, or telling tales of shocking depravity at the podium. After some of the things he heard other people confess, Harry felt like a right punter.

Going to regular WAND meetings at night and being with so may people who were not just close friends, but fellow recovering addicts made Harry feel much better. As much as he had laughed in the past at WANDers eating cookies and drinking butterbeer that was supplied for free by Aberforth Dumbledore, courtesy of _The Hog's Head_, he had become one of them.

As it turned out, the mysterious barman whose best friends were his herd of goats was the founder of WAND.

Remus Lupin attended meetings three times a week, and his pregnant wife, Tonks accompanied him, for solidarity. And his godfather, Sirius Black, and Professor Snape were there every day.

Harry was surprised to see the disreputable Death Eater fathers of his old enemies in regular attendance. Lucius Malfoy was a regular visitor, and he was usually flanked by Mick Crabbe and Alf Goyle.

Harry gave his old enemies a wide berth, but Mick Crabbe, who was every bit as dim as his son, broke away from his cronies and lurched towards Harry, his bulk only dwarfed by that of Alf Goyle, who loyally followed his friend in a shambling gait.

Harry couldn't help but think that this is what shoggoths must look like.

"Uh, me an Alifie 'ere, guv'nor, we just wanted to say we was sorry we didn't 'elp you or yer friend that night in the boneyard. We was all 'ighed up on the Doom again, and we didn't know our arses from our elbows. But we're all clean an' sober now an' we ain't going back to Old Tom Riddle no more, ain't we, Alfie?"

"That's right, Mick. We even told our boys they 'ad better quit botherin' your lot. 'E wanted our boys, 'e done, the wicked old screw. We're on probation guv'nor. I told my Greg, you leave Mr. Potter and 'is lot alone, you don't want your old Dad in Azkaban, do yuh? But we are sorry, guv'nor."

Harry didn't know what to say and he was relived of having to say anything when Lucuis Malfoy, strode across the room to collect his wayward cohorts.

"Crabbe! Goyle! Stop bothering Mr. Potter! Do you want your probation revoked?" he insisted, actually pulling them back with his silver and ebony walking stick.

"We was just apologisin'." Crabbe explained.

"It's alright. I accept your apology. It's not as if you could have done anything, he'd of killed you as well. I'm not too sure about Purple Doom, but I've been out of it enough to do just about anything. That's why I'm on probation, too. I'll be going to Azkaban with you." Harry blurted out.

All three looked surprised.

"Oh?" Malfoy asked.

"I, ah used the Cruciatus Curse on this witch who stole me money and me Magus Charge out me wallet while I was sleeping. She wouldn't tell me where it was, and she wouldn't give it back." Harry explained.

"And you were actually threatened with Azkaban, just for that?' Malfoy snorted.

"Well, it wasn't the first time I was off me arse and I used an Unforgivable. And they did have me on physical assault. Multiple accounts of physical assault. I do get sort of, oh, violent, when I'm off me head. I, ah, well I've had, ah, quite a few disputes with quite a few wizards in Knockturn Alley and quite a few of them really got the shit beaten out of them. I thought I'd be in less trouble if I didn't use magic. I was wrong, I guess. And ah, I never asked every witch I put the boots to to show me her ID after I turned 16. We were just having a good time, yunno, I don't see why that's illegal. It's not as if they were 12 or 13 or anything. Uh, actually, I've done a lot of, erm, illegal things, pretty much every day, for quite some time, now. And when they got me, I did have four giant rocks of smack, a kilo of Jamiacan ganja, two bottles of my Aunt's Percs, a fifth of Jack Daniels and two bottles of Captain Morgan's in my school trunk and on my person." Harry admitted.

"You forgot that you almost killed my son in one of the Men's lavatories at Hogwarts." Malfoy reminded him, crisply

"He was going to use the death curse on me!"

"Over drug money?"

Harry looked at his feet.

"Yeah. I can't believe we almost killed each other over a few galleons and a rock of smack."

"And it would have been my fault, Mr. Potter. I was Draco's connection. So you see we are all of us swimming in the same filthy sea of drugs, violence, death and corruption. There are no apologies necessary here, Potter. We're all bunch of gutter junkie cutthroats, in this together." Malfoy told him.

"I never ratted on him, though. And Draco never ratted on me."

"Spoken like a true desperado, Mr. Potter. Crabbe, Goyle, Go sit down. Now." Malfoy suddenly ordered.

"I do appreciate you not turning my son in for selling you drugs. He won't be doing that anymore, I can assure you. Nonetheless, considering there's no love lost between you and Draco, I am grateful, and so is he."

Harry shrugged.

"Draco had a chance to rat me out as well, and he didn't. He did tell me you were getting clean, and I didn't want to make trouble. I know how hard it is."

Harry was beginning to get nervous and was almost glad when Snape came and sat down beside him.

"Good evening, Lucius. It's good to see you here."

"You'll be seeing a lot of me, here, Severus. Crabbe and Goyle and I were trying to make amends with Mr. Potter, that's all. Potter has been telling me about his laundry list of offences. Brawling in Knockturn Alley. Seducing underage witches. Drunken revelry. Drug orgies. He's been spending too much time with you, hasn't he?" Lucius said.

Harry noticed that Snape looked upset.

"My lips are sealed, Severus." Malfoy reminded him.

Malfoy herded Crabbe and Goyle back to their seats.

"Go sit in your seat, I'd like to talk to Mr. Malfoy in private." Snape told Harry.

Harry put aside any suspicion he had about the two old Death Eaters having a private talk and went to get some more free butterbeer.

"Luke, I want to thank you for paying off those yobs to shut their gobs about Potter beating the unholy fuck out of them. That was a stupid thing for the lad to do, and it could have cost him his freedom. "

"I owe Mr. Potter. And I have no love lost for the Aurors. Honesty, Sev, I think he should be told the truth. Black thinks so too, doesn't he?"

"Yes. And I agree with both of you."

"Snape! Harry's taking the podium." Lupin suddenly called to him.

Everyone was quiet and rushed to a seat.

Harry had never taken the podium before.

Everybody rushed to the benches and sat down, their eyes fixed on Harry with rapt attention.

This was the story they had been waiting for, and Harry decided he might as well give it to them, straight.

"Uh, hello. Erm, I'm Harry Potter and I'm a useless fucking drunk and a filthy gutter junkie. I've dragged my name and my father's through the mud and I can't say I ever really cared, until I bottomed out in a pool of me own puke and nearly choked to death on the floor of Albus Dumbledore's office, a few hours after OD'ing on the Hogwarts Express. But now I'm sober. So I remember why I started drinking. First of all so I could forget what a useless, filthy waste of a human being I am. And second because I was so angry, I just wanted to kill somebody. So I'm sober, but I'm still angry. I'm really angry. I wish Voldemort and about twenty Death Eaters would come in here right now and I swear I could kill 'em all with me bare hands. I suppose I'm really angry because I feel like people have been using me all my life and I never got a fair shake. Everybody thinks I grew up like some kind of little prince. Well, I didn't. My parents are dead and I was raised by people who could care less about me. They gave me old clothes that didn't fit me to wear and stuck me in a cubbyhole under the stairs. I'm really glad my godfather is still alive. That made me feel so much better. Ah, anyway, me sponsor, Professor Snape tells me I should forget how angry I am at the world because people are fairly stupid and useless, and I should concentrate on doing what I have to do for meself and the people I love. That's really good advice, but I don't think I can follow it until I tell you why I'm such a filthy human being, because I think they're connected."

Harry rubbed his scar and cleared his throat.

_Oh my God, Lucuis Malfoy is here. And Sirius. And Tonks and Remus. Everybody is here. Oh, God, why tonight?!_ Harry thought.

"So, uh I wanna share the occasion I had me first drink and got high for the first time. Like a lot of people it's the same time I lost me cherry, and like a lot of people it wasn't under what you might call reputable circumstances. The first time I ever got drunk was the summer I turned 15, right after the Triwizard Tournament thing, at the start of my fifth year. Rita Skeeter convinced me to come to her office for an interview. I don't know why I went. Maybe I was hoping I could get her to turn into a bug, so I could squish the fuck out of her. Anyway, I was pretty fucking devastated, and all, so she offered me a drink of firewhiskey. And another drink of firewhiskey. And a toke, or two. And pretty soon I was fucking legless. Uh, I somehow ended up pantsless as well. I don't even really remember how it happed. No, that's a lie, I do remember. Every time I see my name under her byline, I try to drink the memory away."

Harry scratched his head, rubbed his scar, and took a drink of water.

His audience was riveted, especially Lucius Malfoy, who had a look of disgust and horror on his face.

"So I got up to leave after the interview's over and I tripped on my way to the door. I mean I was absolutely pissed off me arse. And Rita caught me. I mean, she's older I know, but she's not a bad-looking chick. And you know what they say about older women. Anyway, she helped me to the couch in her office and she was telling me what a fine man I was growing up to be, and I hadn't shaved that day and she said something about my whiskers, and how sometimes a young man like me needed an older woman to show him the ways of the world and take care of him. And I was 15, I was a man, right? And the way some girls have daddy issues, I guess I have mommy issues, or something, or maybe I was just drunk, so I went along with it. I mean, she didn't have to twist my arm. I mean who gives a fuck, pussy's pussy, right? I mean if you're not a poof, who says no to it?"

"'Ere, Ere!" Mr. Goyle called out.

"Shut up, you fucking moron!" Mr. Malfoy quieted him.

Harry rubbed at his scar again, and took another glass of water.

"The worst part of it was she wasn't a bad-looking old girl, and, as I'm sure some of you know, she's a pretty good lay. So I went back. A lot. I mean all I had to do was tell her something about me, or Hogwarts, or one of my mates, or the school or the teachers or the Ministry, anything she could gossip about, and…well, there's no putty a nice lacy fucking doily around it, is there? And I mean here were are, a bunch of degenerate fucking drunks and junkies who've cheerfully done all sorts of filthy things just to get high so, who am I fucking kidding, right? I knew she was just using me for information and I didn't care. I wanted to get drunk and I wanted to get high and I wanted to get laid. So I kept going back. Well, it didn't take me too long to figure out I didn't need her for any of it, I could get stoned and pissed and shagged all on me own. So that was the end of it. Mind, right there I knew I was a filthy excuse for a human being. But there's more."

Harry caught a sob coming up in his throat.

He really hoped he wasn't going to start blubbering in front of everyone

"Christ, do I need a fucking drink right now. Anyway, I've never told anybody and it's made me feel worse instead of better. I mean all of you probably think well, what could Harry Potter have possibly done that's so low he ended up here? How about plenty? I mean if selling out me friends for a few drinks and cheap fuck from an old whore isn't bad enough, I've got more. I could tell you about picking fights with wizards who had nice clothes on so I could steal their money to score once I beat the fuck out of them. The time they have me on record for isn't the only time I was mean and high and drunk and used an unforgivable. And I suppose I wasn't too nice to a great many of the witches I've fucked, after I'd fucked them, not that I can really remember a lot of them too well. I once gave a classmate of mine who was my connection a bag of Muggle quarters I put a glamour over, and he and I almost killed one another in one of the boy's loo's at Hogwarts over a few galleons and a rock of smack. I'm so ashamed about the last two years. …not so much for the things I did to meself, I don't give a toss about meself. But the things I did to other people…the way I treated me mates…and me girlfriend…me family… the girls I slept with…and that witch I …well, I tortured her, didn't I? And she wasn't the only one. I threatened to kill her. I just want you all to know I'm no better than any wretched soul who ever dragged their worthless hide through these doors. I may be worse. The fact that I'm Harry Fucking Potter, Saviour of the Fucking Universe doesn't mean shit. I'm a useless fucking drunk and a filthy gutter junkie and a pathetic excuse for a human being. I've kicked people in the face while they're lying in the gutter. I've used unforgivables and forbidden hexes. I've all but killed wizards I hardly know and won't ever see again, and I've made an arse and a swine and a wreck of meself. Just so I could stay high enough to face the next day. And now that I'm sober…now I'm sober…I'm not angry anymore…because…I wish…I'm so ashamed…so terribly fucking ashamed…I wish I was dead...I really wish I was dead."

Then Harry just completely broke down and started crying, right in front of everybody.

Every nasty, awful, sordid, disgusting thing he'd ever done from the first until the end with the junkie witch and the Cruciatus Curse all came rushing to the front of his mind like a vast ocean of foul, dirty water and Harry couldn't sit down, he couldn't move, all he could do was stand there and cry and let it all run out of him until it lay before him like a dirty puddle on the floor.

The assembled witches and wizards were all so shocked and appalled that for a moment, none of them could move either.

But someone had moved and someone had their arm around Harry and through his haze of tears he accepted a snow-white handkerchief from a long white hand and to his horror he looked up and saw that his benefactor was his mortal enemy, the father of his mortal enemy.

Malfoy cast a Time Slowing Spell.

"I have to tell you some things, Mr. Potter. Don't look at me like I'm the very Devil. I don't know when I'll ever have the chance to speak to you like this, again, so you must listen to me, now. I know, all of us here, especially those of us who were taken in by Tom Riddle, we know about the kind of shame that you feel. I was fifteen when I became a Death Eater. Riddle lured all of us in with grand talk about racial purity and superiority, but he got us all hooked on Purple Doom, and those of us who had the misfortune to be pretty, in a certain way, like…like Draco's mother and I…he sold us like we were cattle. Pimped us off to his contacts, to his business associates, to anyone who paid the price he demanded. Not to mention used by him for his own twisted purposes, men and women, or should I say boys and girls, alike. Horrible, debauched, wicked men and women who forced us, forced me, to do the most disgusting and unspeakable things in exchange for the money, the power and the favours that Dark Lord sought. Me. A Malfoy, a Lord, the scion of one of the Wizarding World's oldest families. No better than a common whore in the street."

"Worse, because there was no perversion, no humiliation I was permitted to refuse. One needed Purple Doom, and a twisted, wicked heart to survive such degradation. For so many years, I tried to justify what happened to me, to all of us. Don't you think I'm ashamed? I saw Crabbe's brother violated until he was dead. The wicked, evil, fucking pigs we'd been sold to continued to abuse his bleeding corpse. I had to kill them to get away and throw my broken body at Voldemort's feet and beg him not to kill me for destroying some of his friends. It was not the first time I had killed in his service. He tortured me into unconsciousness, using me in ways so painful and revolting that I do believe they would have shocked his favourite Muggle author, De Sade. Then he had me thrown into a dungeon where he left my broken, bloody, violated body lay for what seemed like me to be days. Of course I was nursed back to health, so I could service him again, in less painful but still soul-murdering ways. Eventually he said I had learned my lesson, I had been broken and remade as a true Death Eater, a Man of Steel and I tried for so many years to believe that, but stone cold sober it's not hard to see I was just a rich pretty boy he could fuck and pimp off and get money out of. I am not bisexual, Mr. Potter. I don't like sex with men. Even if I did, no one could want sex with that thing Tom Riddle, considering the grotesque perversions he practises. Don't you think I'm ashamed? And guilty?"

"And what about Severus? He wasn't pretty enough to tickle to old bastard's fancy, but Riddle used him, nonetheless. I hear you've been asking people about what Severus is really like. If anyone but your mother could answer that, it's me. He was like an old man when he was eleven; he came to Hogwarts knowing more about the world than most do when they leave it. Nothing he saw in Voldemort's service could shock Severus; he knew when he was just a child what a wicked, rotten place this world can be. But Severus was always brilliant, especially with chemicals and potions. Voldemort seduced Severus into his service so he could use Snape for his personal Potions Master and his Drug Lord. Not with all that shit about purity of the blood. Riddle offered Severus money and power, things most of us already had. And a guarantee he'd never harm Lily Evans. Of course, Riddle gave him none of it, but Severus was so hooked by the time he realised he'd been duped, he couldn't stop. He made Doom, he sold Doom and if you didn't pay Severus Snape for your Doom he'd beat you very methodically into a bloody pulp if he was in a kind mood, break your bones if he was feeling a bit testy, and if he was in a bad mood he'd throw such a wicked group of hexes at you you'd never get out of St Mungo's. And then laugh about it. Snape was the most cruel, vicious, brutal man I ever met. I saw him methodically beat Sirius Black half to death, on school grounds. If it hadn't been for your mother stopping him, he would have done. He was treated horribly as a child, and as soon as he became a man he swore he'd never let anyone raise their hand to him again, and he meant it. Even I was terrified of him and he was my very best friend. But it made him strong and impervious to pain. No one has ever been tortured the way Riddle has tortured Snape. And not just with the Cruciatus Curse. When he was an addict, Voldemort used to have Snape thrown into a cell in his dungeons every once in awhile, and leave him there for three days with no food, no water, and no drugs. You could hear him screaming all over the castle. But Riddle never broke Severus. He'd stagger out of the cell, refuse Voldemort's offer of a fix and say he had to go back to Hogwarts and make up for the time he'd lost with his work. Voldemort still tortures Snape, on occasion. Snape never makes a sound. I don't know how he can live with the pain. Maybe because he's been beaten and abused since he was just a little boy. Potter, I've seen his bones snap like twigs under the Cruciatus Curse and he remains as silent as the grave. Who wouldn't be afraid of a man like that? When he was high he was like a mad dog, and he didn't care who he stepped on or how hard he had to step on them to claw his way closer to the top. He wanted to kill Voldemort even before he went over to the other side because he wanted to be the boss. Snape was a real mercenary. He never really bought any of that bollocks about blood and purity. And he never thought Tom Riddle was anything more than a power-mad, psychopathic old poof. He just wanted all the money and all the power he could get. He was smarter than the rest of us, he knew just when to jump off the sinking ship. Severus Snape is the strongest, bravest, fiercest man I've ever known. He has saved my family and I from ruin, both spiritual, physical and financial, even when I scorned him for a liar and a traitor, he remained true. And he will not rest until he sees Voldemort dead, for all the wrongs he did us, especially the wrong he did to you and your mother and James Potter. That's what Severus Snape is really like. "

"Listen, Mr. Potter, everyone here has horrible memories that torment them with guilt and shame. It's good to face up to them, but you can't let them lead you astray. You must be strong, so that we can get him, get Riddle make him pay for what he's done to us. And you must be strong and keep your sobriety and dig yourself out from under his curse. You must be brave and strong and true. Like Severus is. Do you understand?"

Harry couldn't believe what he had just heard. Crabbe's uncle raped to death? Draco's father sold like a slab of meat, violated by strangers, repeatedly violated by Voldemort himself, in disgusting ways, used like a Kleenex you might casually jack off into? And Snape slaving away in his lab making Purple Doom, strung out and sweating, beating his payment out of equally sweaty and strung out customers, silently bearing up under repeated administrations of torture only to be lied to and cheated and see his best friend murdered anyway. And still, tortured by the Dark Lord to this day? And this was how Voldemort treated those who were loyal to him?

Harry knew new resolve that Voldemort had to be stopped.

And he wondered how these two men could live with such guilt and shame.

He wondered if Lupin became a drunk because he'd killed people in his werewolf form, killed them and eaten them and drank their blood, and how he could live with that?

Maybe you just had to.

Maybe you just did.

As time resumed as normal, Professor Snape walked up to the podium.

"Thank you, Lucius. I think you had better get ready to go home now, Mr. Potter." Snape said, as gently as he could.

Harry got a round of applause as he stepped off the podium and Sirius came up to him.

"I feel a right berk. Blubbering in front of everyone like some little fourth year who's had her cherry popped after the Yule Ball." Harry protested, violently wiping the tears from his eyes with his fists.

"Don't. That was very good, Harry. That's progress. You got it all off your chest, now maybe you'll feel a little better."

"I hope so, Sirius. Because right now I feel like I wish I was dead."

"Before you leave, Mr. Potter, I want you to know you are a recovered alcoholic and addict and a brave young man to confront your problems and the problems of the Wizarding World that grown witches and wizards are too terrified to even think of. You are not a drunk. You are not a junkie. And you are neither worthless nor filthy. Do we all agree?" Snape said, from the podium.

Everybody began cheering for Harry, and clapping.

"You may not believe that, tonight, Mr. Potter, but we are all here to see that someday you do. Tonight's meeting is adjourned." Snape finished.

Sirius sat Harry down beside Lupin and Tonks.

He looked at his feet, rather than at either of them.

"I'm going to go get you another butterbeer."

"And a few biscuits." Harry said, shakily.

"And a few biscuits."

"Do you still want me to be your son's godfather?" Harry asked the ground.

"I can't think of nobody else." Tonks said.

"I wouldn't even consider it." Lupin agreed.

Harry looked so bereft that they both gave him a hug.

Siruis came back with the butterbeer and the biscuits.

"I wonder what Snape and Malfoy are talking about?" he said, a bit suspiciously.

"We're all on the same side now, Sirius." Harry reminded him, as he tucked into the food.

* * *

Meanwhile, Snape and Malfoy took the chance of stealing a few moments to speak to one another.

"I really am glad to see you here, tonight, Luke. I don't think I could have found it in me to carry out a death sentence on such a good friend. My godson's father, after all!"

"We were good friends, many years ago, before all this, weren't we Sev?"

"When did we stop being good friends? I wasn't sure you weren't just here because of probation. But I'm convinced, now that you really do want to change. Did you tell Harry…everything?"

Malfoy's face twisted.

"Yes. He was horrified."

"Who wouldn't be? God in heaven, Luke, what Riddle did to you! Who could blame you for becoming twisted so badly?" Snape said, sadly.

"So twisted I could slip a magical object destined to kill innocent children into one of my son's little classmates school bags? I wish I could say I was under the influence when I did that. Nonetleless, it was a long slide down from there. I was a fool to lose my sobriety and return to my folly, but when Riddle suggested that I sell my son to him for the same purposes for which he used me and my wife; I did what I had to in order to free myself from the coils of Purple Doom and the Dark Lord once again. It was enough I had Draco pushing drugs like a Muggle street urchin. No, I will not live to suffer that one more witch or wizard would be subjected to what I was. Or what you were. I am not just here to escape Azkaban, I am with you. And Draco. He's told me he's been your eyes and ears in Voldemort's keep for some time, now. I owe you for telling him the truth about Tom Riddle before my fate befell him. As for me, I renounce Tom Riddle. I wish to God he had never lived, and I hope I live long enough to watch him die. If the Devil will grant me a boon when I am in Hell with him, I wish to be his tormentor for all eternity." Malfoy told him.

"Not if I get there before you do, Luke." Snape assured him.

"Let's drink to that, Sev."

Under Sirius' watchful eyes, the two Slytherins went to get some butterbeer.

After they had their drink, Snape put on his cloak.

"We have class early, tomorrow, Mr. Potter. I'll see you all tomorrow night." He said.

"Erm, goodbye, everyone." Harry said, quietly.

Snape had to lead him out the door, and Harry shuffled as he walked, like a little lost sheep.

Harry lit up.

So did Snape.

"Professor, why do I feel so awful? I feel like I'll never feel good again." Harry told him, as they walked to the apparation point.

"You feel awful because life is pain, and you've stopped using painkillers. I feel that way meself, sometimes."

"What should I do?"

"Indulge yourself in the comforts of the vices left to you. Have Dobby bring you something to eat. And don't sleep alone tonight. If you don't feel better tomorrow, or the next day, eventually, you will."

Harry sort of wished that Snape would lie to him and speak in bullshit platitudes, but fat lot of good that would do him, anyway.

He took a long drag on his cigarette.

"Maybe it'll stop raining, tomorrow." He mused.

"Maybe." Snape agreed.

* * *

Meanwhile, back at the Shrieking Shack, some of the WANDers were still socilaising. It was one of the few places in the Wizarding world where witches and wizards of all classes, houses and bloodlines could mix together, freely.

Especially in times of war, when everything was suspicious.

Malfoy took the plunge, and sat with Sirius Black and Remus Lupin.

Warily, Crabbe and Goyle hovered.

"Poor lad. Still it'll be better for him from now on." Goyle said, taking a thoughtful drink.

"Hallo, Mike. Hallo Alf. How's the junkyard business?" Lupin asked.

"Not bad, Moony. Keeps that Hogwarts tuition paid." Crabbe said

"Well, I've got this old mirror. Crabby, snarky old thing. I was wondering if you two wanted it."

"We can always shift a magic mirror…." Goyle began.

As Lupin drew Crabbe and Goyle into a conversation, Lucius Malfoy decided to get down to brass tacks.

"Well, Black? As a peer of the realm I demand you have that disgusting Skeeter woman arrested for what she did to Mr. Potter."

"Arrested?" Sirius asked.

"Yes, Black, arrested. The boy said he was fifteen. If it was in the summer, he may have been as young as fourteen. I can think of a laundry list of offences you could bring against that disgusting pervert of a witch."

"I suppose it's no different than a dirty old pedo going after a young girl." Sirius mused.

"Of course it's not! You heard it from Mr. Potter's own lips that his violation at the hands of that harridan was what started him on the road to ruin! Maybe he wasn't a child, but it's not as if he willingly agreed to the relationship! Why, the poor boy was plied with drugs and booze and repeatedly molested, and manipulated into telling tales about himself and his closest friends! If it was done to a witch you would have been halfway to the Ministry by now! It's no easier on a boy than it is on a girl. No one enjoys being molested and exploited!" Malfoy insisted.

Sirius hadn't though of it that way.

When it hit him how his godson had been misused and abused he became just as angry as Malfoy.

"You're right, Malfoy! Freedom of the press dose not encompass contributing to the delinquency of a minor, statutory rape, sexual assault, possession, possession with intent to distribute and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse." Sirius rattled off, filing the charges already in his mind.

"What does that last one mean?"

"It means I'll bet she made him go down on her."

"Oh God, Black! That whore? It's a wonder the boy could ever have normal relations with a woman, again.' Malfoy replied.

"She's written her last column, Lord Malfoy, I promise you."

"Judge Black, I'm glad to hear you say that."

* * *

Harry was peacefully eating his breakfast and the Gryffindor table when Ron and Hermione came dancing over with the morning edition of the Daily Prophet.

"Good news?" Harry asked.

"Good news? Great news! The nasty bitch has finally done it! She's going to Azkaban for a long, long, long time!" Ron enthused.

"Who?" Harry asked.

"Look at this, Harry." Hermione told him.

She gave him the paper.

"What? What the fuck? I can't believe it! Finally, some justice for Harry Potter! I have to go! I have to go beg Snape and Dumbledore to let me go to the sentencing. Do wizard courts do victim impact statements? I'll go anyway. I can't wait to see her face!"

Harry drank down his pumpkin juice and fairly danced away.

Ron and Hermione looked at the headline and byline again.

SKEETER STUNG WITH PEDO CHARGES IN SHOCKING SEX CASE

_Daily Prophet Scribe Seduced Young Wizard, 14, Traded Sex and Drugs for Hogwarts Secrets._

The article went on to say that authorities were withholding the student's name because he had been a minor at the time of the events in question.

"Oh my God, that's sick! No wonder poor Harry became a drunk." Ron commented.

"That bitch! I could just kill her!" Hermione exploded.

"Too bad they've locked her up already, I would have torn her to pieces." Ginny growled.

Harry's victim impact statement was very good.

First, he made sure not to shower, shave or change his clothes for a day or three prior, just to give himself that certain pitiful and yet spunky look.

He put a nice shuffle in his walk when he entered the courtroom, and although he knew exactly what he was going to say, he pulled a haphazardly folded and partially crumpled parchment from the pocket of his robes and looked at it every once and awhile, as he spoke.

"Your Honour, witches and wizards of the jury, my name is Harry Potter and that woman, Rita Skeeter, had been victimising me in one way or the other since I was thirteen years old. She had printed lies and half-truths, some of them very mean and hurtful about me since I was little more than a child. And when I was just on the cusp of becoming a man, she victimised me in a much more personal way. Since I was ten years old I've lived my life in the public eye and there's very little in my life that's mine. Ms. Skeeter took some of that from me. She robbed me of something that most people take for granted, their bodily integrity. I'll admit to being a junkie and a drunk. I am now in recovery. And I'll admit to having been insanely promiscuous. I'll even admit that the allegations Ms. Skeeter made about my, ah, attributes are all true. And I can't blame all of it on her. But if you want to know who the first person was that made me feel like I was little more than a commodity to be exploited, it was her. The only person I can think of who had a worse effect on my life was Tom Riddle, himself. He took my family, and scarred my body. Rita took my innocence, and scarred my soul. She gave me my first drink, my first joint, even my first bump of coke. True, I can't blame her that I became a drunken junkie thug who would take any witch who crooked her finger at me. But she sure did start me on that path, and show me the way to bad and ruin, which is where I am today."

Then he cried.

Real tears.

So did the jury.

And the judge.

She gave Rita ten years.

Harry Potter walked calmly out of the courtroom, his eyes dry, with a smile on his face.

As he walked past spectator Lucius Malfoy, he muttered.

"Got the bitch. Now she knows, you do not fuck with Harry Potter."

He sailed out of the room.

Malfoy turned to his wife.

"You see what I mean, Narcissa? Now do you see?" he asked her.

"I see, Lucius. It is obvious. And he should have been in Slytherin." Narcissa agreed.


	6. Spells, Surprises and Sex Magick

**Chapter Six: Spells, Surprises and Sex Magick**

As mid-terms approached, Harry had less and less time to lament the loss of his glory days of Burroughsian depravity, as the ugly reality of his situation pressed down upon him. He had to earn mid-term grades 30 higher than he'd scored since he was 15, or face expulsion from Hogwarts, and then Muggle courts in which he was no hero, just another violent junkie yobbo care case gone bad.

One thing, however, that Harry learnt at WAND meetings was that Sirius was right, a lot of people had a lot worse lives than he had and dealt with them without sliding into self-pity and defeat. After everything he had heard and seen at WAND free-for-alls, he wasn't about to let a few mid-terms get him down.

That said, having really no idea of how to properly prepare for an exam, Harry ended up seeing the faces of Hermione and Snape more than he saw his own.

Especially Snape. Hermione had her own finals to study for, but, in that Snape didn't sleep for more than an hour a night, he had a lot of fee time in which to whip Harry's mental acuity into shape

Harry was up late nights and, so was his tutor. He ended up drinking black coffee with waking-up draughts in it, and facing red-eyed mornings, but Snape didn't seem much the worse for it.

He sat behind his desk and smoked, impassive, reading ancient crumbling books or thumbing through _Bad Witch_ when he wasn't helping Harry.

He never looked tired, and sometimes he went right from their studying sessions to take his midnight exercises.

Harry went with him a few times, and Snape left him in the dust.

It was a new nadir in Harry's life, lying on the flagstones of Hogwarts Castle's courtyard. He was gasping desperately for his shrivelled black lungs to suck in some air, his chest burning as Snape casually passed him.

He jogged impassively in place, a cigarette, incredibly, dangling from his lips as he ran.

"What's this, Potter? A few nights of studying and a jog wearing you in? And you want to face Tom Riddle by the send of next semester? You had better quit patting yourself on the back because you didn't lose your sobriety today and get your shit together."

Then he jogged on.

After that, Harry started exercising with Snape every night. And he began hitting the books without Snape's or Hermione's prodding. He started going to the library and studying with Ginny, and using the study periods in his schedule for actually studying. He was only going to WAND the required amount of times, and driving himself far beyond what he thought his capacity for endurance was, and chiefly for one reason.

To make that snarky cocksucker Snape bleeding eat his bleeding words.

There was no way he was going to let the wicked old screw have the satisfaction of beating him.

Not while he had a fucking breath left in his shrivelled black lungs.

* * *

After a gruelling week of mid-terms and an unbelievably harsh month of dedicated study, Harry was finally facing his last mid-term in a state of exhaustion and delirium, functioning only through the force of his will and radical waking-up draughts.

Of course, Harry's last mid-term was the Potions exam, and of course it was Professor Snape's habit to grade all the potions, for the exam was just to make a certain potion, while the students were in the room.

Of course, Harry could not smoke in the Potions classroom during the entire affair. He consoled himself by loudly thinking the most horrible thoughts he could muster in Snape's general direction, hoping they would assault his Legilimency teacher's brains.

If they did, Snape did not show it.

"Well, the good news is, you've all passed. Even you, Longbottom. Moreover, three of these Skele-Gro Potions are of such high quality that I will deliver them directly to Madame Pomfrey in the Infirmary, as opposed to pouring them out. It won't surprise any of you, I'm sure, to learn that two are those of Miss Granger and Miss Weasley, but the third is Mr. Potter's. I always knew you were smart enough, Potter, it was only that you refused to apply yourself. Or you were too drunk and smacked out. Keep up the hard work, and you may become an auror yet. Five points to Griffindor for Mr Potter's potion; he is the most improved student in the class this semester. Dismissed." Professor Snape announced.

Amid the ruckus and his classmates congratulations, Harry didn't know what to say. He sat in his desk, with Snape's words chasing around his mind in circles like a yapping little dog with a bow in its hair.

Ron steered Harry towards Snape's desk, nudged him and cleared his throat.

"Thank you, Professor Snape." Harry finally said to Snape.

"Don't thank me, Potter, you're the one who did the work. I wouldn't have given you any grade you didn't deserve, you can be sure of that. However, since mid-terms are over, and you did so well on today's exam, you may have the evening off. And since you have just successfully completed the first part of your probation, you may have your Hogsmeade week-end."

"I can? Hey, everybody, did you hear that? I've got a night off! Everybody to the Three Broomsticks, the drinks are on me!" Harry announced.

Somewhere in his brain a little voice told him that he was exhausted, but he was dead chuffed about his victory, and ignored it.

He's been pushing his luck since he was ten years old.

What was one more night?

Meanwhile, at Harry's offer of free drinks for everybody, cheers ensued.

"Uh, Potter?"

There was Malfoy, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle.

Just like their fathers.

"Do you mean the Slytherins, too?' he asked.

Basking in the rosy glow of victory and complete mental derangement, Harry smiled, broadly at his lifelong enemies, and threw open his arms in a grand gesture of woozy goodwill.

"Why the fuck not? First of all, I owe you one for not ratting me out. Second, I mean we're all wizards and witches, we're all in the same school, aren't we? We shouldn't let Tom Riddle and his bullshit philosophy divide us up any longer. Sure, I mean everybody!"

"Gee 'Arry, that's big of you. I thought you didn't like us cos Draco and Greg are gay together wif Pansy Parkinson." Crabbe said.

Malfoy and Goyle looked horrified.

"Crabbe, you moron, how can either of us be gay with a woman!" Malfoy screamed.

"Well, you're straight wif her then and gay wif each other." Crabbe reasoned.

"Yeah. That's it." Goyle agreed.

Malfoy looked like he wanted to cry from frustration.

"Aww, why should I care? So you're having a ménage a trois? I'm a junkie, and a drunk and I'm a bigger whore than Moaning Myrtle ever was. So what? Let's all go have a fucking drink." Harry announced.

"Oi, watch what you say about my girlfriend! She's a free spirit, that's all!" Ron protested.

Harry just laughed and led the class out the door.

Malfoy sidled up to Ron.

"You know what, Weasley? I don't think it's funny at all. They're all naff, all of them. I know how you feel, having people laugh at you because they think that what turns you on is weird. Well, let them laugh, I say. Now listen, I know of a spell you could use, you could really make Myrtle your girlfriend. In the flesh, shall we say?" He said, conspiratorially.

Ron wasn't too sure if he could trust Draco, but he was desperate.

"Come off it, Weasley! Like Potter said, we're all in this together."

Ron decided he'd take a chance.

"Is it Black Magic?"

"Not really. I mean Jimmy Page wrote it, so it's a little dodgy, but you can't be a Goody Fucking two Shoes all your life, can you? I mean it's not Unforgivable, or Forbidden, or anything. Just a little, ah, secret and maybe a bit, oh, socially inappropriate. I suppose it's Sex Magic, technically, and they don't teach it here, but if your over 16 it's legal to practise first degree, right? Right. Now, if you go to the very bottom floor of the library…"

Everyone was in a rush to stampede to the Three Broomsticks. They all knew Harry was good for quite a jolly-up, and now that he was making his triumphant return to same, they didn't want to miss it.

Even Ron was so preoccupied he didn't notice that Hermione wasn't in the crowd.

Harry did, but he figured that Hermione had bigger fish to fry.

Neville was the last one out the door.

"Did I get a D, again, Professor?" Neville asked.

"No, Longbottom. You got a C." Snape replied.

"A C? I did! Holy shit!"

A jubilant Neville, not realising he had just cursed at a professor, closed the door.

"I'm still here, Snape."

Professor Snape looked up.

"Are you waiting on something, Granger?"

Hermione stalked up to the desk.

"Not for much longer. You know, I've gotten some rather interesting proposals from your friend Lucius Malfoy. And from Ron, as well. Maybe I ought to take one of them up on it."

Snape raised an eyebrow.

"I wouldn't recommend you getting involved with Weasley. It would be a big step down from me, and you'd probably have to present a slide show in order to explain to him what he was supposed to do. As for Luke, well he's one of my oldest friends so I really don't mind sharing you with him. In fact, he's convinced you're the sort of witch who'd love to have two wizards at once. I think something could be arranged." Snape said, calmly.

He chuckled at the look that came over Hermione's face.

Well, that was another twenty quid he owed Luke.

"Dammit, Snape, don't be snarky with me! Why have you been ignoring me, lately? "

"Because I've been spending all me free time trying to save your friend Potter from certain doom, and I've had exams to write and grade, and papers to read, and potions to test and I've been tutoring Potter overtime to get him to do well on his mid-terms, and save his arse. Not to mention how close we are to getting the Purple Doom antidote perfected. For every hour of work you do in the lab, I must do ten in the lab and in the library. I'm sorry if I can't always be spot on to be your gigolo, but I do have more important things to worry about than your pussy. If you're so randy, why don't you give your friend Weasley a nice mercy shag like you've suggested? He could use it." Snape shot back.

Hermione was unaffected.

There was some reason he was being such a toerag.

"Why do you care so much about what becomes of Harry?" Hermione asked.

"I promised his mother I would look after him."

"Did you?' Hermione said

"Yes. I did."

"And just how close were you with Lily Evans?"

Snape chose to ignore that comment.

"Mr. Potter is, however, showing signs of great improvement. And now that mid-terms are over, I think I 'm going to have more of me free time to meself. Which reminds me. I have a necessary ritual that I have to perform to further protect you from the unsavoury designs of that bastard Crich. I'll expect you to report to my rooms, to-night, at eleven-thirty, sharp. You'll have to prepare beforehand, because the ceremony must take place during the witching hours."

"Snape, I am going to kill you! I The last thing I want to do is go through some boring, poncy, stupid…." Hermione threatened.

"Why, Granger, I'm surprised! You've always been so keen on the arcane mysteries of the rites of Sex Magick. And it's not every day a witch of your age and inexperience is allowed to participate in a rite of the Third Degree with a Master Magus of same." Snape casually answered as he washed out the sink.

Hermione resisted the strong urge to break an empty flask over his head, not because she didn't want to hurt him just then, but because she knew that he'd probably just find it terribly amusing.

She mustered up all her will to keep her brusque, businesslike General Granger cool.

"Is there anything I need to bring with me?" she asked.

Snape considered a rude reply, but resisted the temptation.

"Yes. Bring your wand, and don't wear anything under your robes. That will be all Granger."

Hermione nodded, turned on her heel and left the Potions classroom.

"Severus, you're such an evil bastard." She chuckled to herself as she made for the secret passage to The Three Broomsticks.

* * *

It was the night of the full moon, a night of devilment, debauchery, depravity, and other indoor sports in most places, but particularly so in the Wizarding World.

As the witching hours approached, Hogwarts was quiet and still, but as it usually is in the night, the game was afoot.

Deep in the dusty, cobweb-ridden bowels of the Hogwarts library, Ron found the small leather-bound book hidden right where Malfoy had told him it was.

It was much newer than the book it was housed with, well-used and obviously hidden.

Ron opened the book and there, in the master Musical Magus' own hand was a spell entitled "Love (or Something Like It) Never Dies." It read:

_This spell is to be used by a witch or wizard who has fallen in love, or at least in lust with a Wraith, but doesn't want to die for the cause. On the night of the Full Moon, gather one ounce of Dragon's Blood, one lock of your hair, three drops of your blood, and one diced mandrake root. Mix them in a wooden mortar with a wooden pestle. Or glass. Anything but iron. Use of iron tools or vessels at any point in your preparations will spoil the spell._

_At midnight, under the light of the moon, through an open window if the ghost can't go outside, you must undress, yes completely, and rub some of the potion on your forehead, over your heart and on your belly. Then, put your hand in the remaining potion inside the bowl and have the ghost do the same. Then you must recite these words. _

"_Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. But Death will never kill my lust. Thought it cannot be beneath the Sun, an Elvish Moon shall make us One"_

_Recite in Elvish, Celtic, and Latin, as it appears below. English will not work, this is just the translation._

_This is powerful Elf magic; that's why you can't use iron. It will give you the witching hours between one and three to spend with the object of your affections. You must repeat the words in the spell at every New Moon and Every Full Moon to renew the magic. If you miss a New Moon or Full Moon, you'll have to make the potion up again._

_The spell only works if the ghost is willing. Good luck and don't say I didn't warm you, because I have. Do not use this spell unless you really have it bad. Because Elf magic is tricky and full of mischief. You never know how it might turn out._

_But what the hell? Get it while you can, I always say._

_James Patrick Page, Musical Magus, Class of 1951_

It was the night of the full moon, and only two hours until midnight.

Ron was prepared. He had already borrowed Harry's Invisibility cloak, so under the cover of it, he broke into the Potions classroom, stole what he needed and hurriedly made up the potion.

Ron knew that if anybody found out, they'd think he was crazy. His friends already thought he was crazy. Myrtle was a big joke to them. Joking about how she was a notorious nympho when she was alive and that's why she was moaning all the time.

But what did any of them really know about her? So she wore glasses? So what. They didn't know that she liked jazz music and rock and blues as well as fusion. She was almost as interested in music as Ron was. And she could sing. Nobody really knew that Ron fancied himself a rocker. But Myrtle did. She encouraged him. She certainly never made fun of him, or looked down on him like he was some kind of idiot. Everybody thought she was a joke, too. They didn't know that she turned sixteen only four days before she died. Or that her favourite colour was blue. They certainly didn't know that one of her boyfriends was a good-looking but creepy young wizard named Tom Riddle, whom she ultimately told to take a hike, because he began to suggest they do some fairly sicko things.

Myrtle always though that her death via the basilisk was no accident.

Oh, it freaked him out at first, knowing that Myrtle was looking at him while he was having a wank, and when she first started fluttering around him and hissing dirty things in his ear, and tickling him the way she swished around him, it really freaked him out.

But he still came back the next night.

Well, she was a girl, or at least she had been a girl, and she was the only girl who ever showed any real and serious interest in him.

He supposed it was kind of perverty, getting his rocks off while the ghost of a sixteen year old nympho told him about all her amorous adventures and encouraged him with the absolute best dirty talk he'd ever heard, even in porny movies, but like the song said, get it while you can.

And who was getting hurt? He was enjoying himself, and so was Myrtle, and when he told Harry, Harry only laughed, so he supposed it wasn't so bad.

He really did think of her as his girlfriend. Sometimes he stayed up all night talking to her. Myrtle knew things about Ron that nobody knew. For one thing, she was the only person he could really talk to about music. She knew he played the drums, that he had since he was ten and that Fred and George, who played guitar and bass, wanted to be in a band with him, but Ron was too shy to play in front of people. She knew that Led Zeppelin was his favourite group, and John Bonham was his hero, and she knew Jimmy Page personally.

She knew he felt like he was always in both Harry's and Hermione's shadows and he wanted to do something that would be all his own.

This was going to be the beginning of same. Yes, he,Roanld Weasley was going to BE A MAN.

He was going to pull his finger out.

At ten minutes to midnight, Ron went into Myrtle's bathroom, performed a sealing spell and excitedly called her name.

"Myrtle? Myrtle, it's Ron? Are you there?" Ron called

Myrtle came out of her stall and whirled around him in that cool, tickling breeze that had the unfortunate effect of giving him a huge boner every time there wind blew in summertime.

"Is that you, Ron? Have you got it?"

"Right here. I have to wait five minutes. Lemme take off me robe."

"Oooo, Ron, I love the moustache and sidies. And you're hair's getting good in the back. You're all ginger. I love a man who's all ginger…all over." Myrtle purred.

Ron almost dropped the bowl.

He hung his robe on a peg, then took off his y-fronts and put them in the pocket of his robe.

"Awright, I have to put this stuff on me. Now put your hand in the bowl, Myrtle."

"I know this spell, Ron. It's been used on me before. But never by anybody I wanted so much as you."

"Do you really mean that, Myrtle?"

"Yes. Nobody's actually cared about me before. They all just wanted to get their end off. Say the words, Ron, the clock is chiming. I don't want to wait another month to feel your moustache tickling the inside of my thighs." Myrtle cooed.

"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. But Death will never kill my lust. Thought it cannot be beneath the Sun, an Elvish Moon shall make us One!" Ron pronounced, very loudly. In all three languages.

He heard a loud boom and a crack, like thunder followed by a sizzling bolt of lightening, and was knocked off his feet by the force of the spell in a burst of spicy red smoke.

Ron fell on his arse, smacked his head on the floor, and then the whole room swirled around and everything nearly went black.

"Ron? Are you alright?" Myrtle asked.

Ron sat up on his elbows.

"I just smacked me head is all. I can't see you, Myrtle. All this bloody smoke."

As the red smoke cleared, a girl passed through it.

She was a cute little thing about five foot three, with big, soulful blue eyes and wavy black hair. Just like in the movies, she took off her glasses and unfastened her ponytail and her long hair fell in waves down to her ample arse.

She was packed into her schoolgirl's uniform like two scoops of vanilla ice cream and busting out all over, all tits and lips and arse and thighs, smooth and creamy and curvy like the porno princess of any young man's fantasy.

"Oh my God! Oh my God, Myrtle, You're gorgeous." Ron whimpered.

"And so are you! " Myrtle exclaimed. "_Accio wand_!"

She used Ron's wand to conjure up a fluffy featherbed and some pillows and a furry blanket.

"We can't do it on the floor, can we, Ron?" she asked.

She gave him a wicked look and started undoing the buttons on her shirt.

"What I'm going to do to you, Ron, you great big ginger miracle worker, you've never even heard of. Oooo, come here, come lie down beside me, let me get my hands on you."

Myrtle dropped off her clothes like they had never belonged to her body at all.

Ron gasped.

"You made me a real woman again, and tonight, I'm going to make you a man." She told him.

Ron laid down on the mattress with her and Myrtle wrapped herself around him.

She was real, alright.

"Do you really think I'm big, Myrtle?"

"Almost as big as Harry. But I like you better, my wonderful Weasley."

She laughed, and ruffled his hair, and kissed him.

A strange feeling came over Ronald Weasley.

It started like a little spark that lit up somewhere in his chest and the flame entered his veins and rushed through his entire body. It was a feeling of destiny, like he'd finally found what it was in his life he was looking for.

For the first time in his life, Ron felt like he was a Man.

A Big, Strong, Man.

He kissed Myrtle back with an authority and aggressiveness he'd never felt before, and smiled when he saw the surprised and happy look on her face.

"Then again, maybe you're a man already. But let me teach you...show you everything I know... and that's a lot."

"We've got three hours every night, Myrtle. Take your time. I plan to."

"Oh, Ron…"

That night, some of the students noticed that the moaning from Myrtle's bathroom seemed a little louder than usual.

* * *

In the Potions Master's bedroom in his dungeon deep beneath the castle, the doors were locked and the room was warded.

Hermione stepped out of Snape's bathroom, naked, redolent of the magical oil he had given her to mix with the soap he insisted she thoroughly wash herself with.

She was excited for more than one reason; for one thing it was the first time outside of books she was not strictly permitted to read that she was experiencing the ancient rites of the most arcane and mystical of magics.

The room was alight with black and red candles that were suspended in the air which was heavy with wolfsbane suspended in dragon's oil. The concoction burned in five oil lamps laid out on the five points of the pentacle Snape had drawn around the bed.

On each lamp there was a picture of the dragon that look just like the one Snape had tattooed across the lower part of his torso.

He stood by the bed in the middle of the pentagram, naked as she, with a thousand-year old grimoire that had been in his family for generations floating in front of him.

Snape didn't speak to Hermione, but he pointed to the bed, and she lay down in it.

In a lilting singsong chant, he began to recite several mysterious incantations, first in Latin, then Celtic, and then Elvish.

After each incantation he would touch one of his tattoos and then touch her body in the same place, making the tattoo's image appear on her skin.

Snape touched her in a lingering way, and let each word of the spells roll slowly off his tongue. Hermione was well versed in all three languages; the spells were a mixture of the mysterious and the erotic; one that stuck in her mind was "Let me bind you unto mine own soul. Let me mark thee in sweat and semen; hold me in thy delirium and my flesh and blood and bones shall protect thee. Bathe me in the oil of thy musk, our fortunes entwine with our bodies."

As he spoke, Hermione found she couldn't take her eyes off of Severus.

He always looked like a different man when he was naked; scarred and tattooed, wiry and hairy, broad-shouldered lanky and long-limbed he seemed more of what he really was, a tough and strong Scouser who bore the marks of the wild life he had led right in his bones.

But he looked different yet, now, with his black eyes sparkling with rude incandescent lust, the tattoos taking on new significance with the incantations and the firelight, and the wand with which he was going to work his magick on her rearing to its impossible dimensions.

Perhaps he was Severus Snape, Sex God, but not in the crude, narrow-minded, sloshily romantic way that the girls who had crushes on him imagined. This was something far more primal, elemental. Wrapped in the ecstasy of the ancient rite, the Third Degree master embodied to her all the chaos of creation, the entropy of the vast and infinite universe, the wild and wanton beauty of the void.

Words like abandon and oblivion jetted across Hermione's mind, their engines roaring in her ea

These were rituals that began when time began, presided over by the likes of Dionysus and the Great Mother and her Horned King, the goatish Great God Pan of the Forest Primeval. They were the rites from which every piece of matter, every planet, every creeping creature and every man and woman had been spawned, during the great glorious golden copulation of creation.

Even science calls it "the Big Bang"

The third eye in Hermione flew open.

She looked into the abyss, and it looked into her.

She knew that Snape was not levitating above her, like the candles and the book which still remained in its place by the bed, but it seemed to her like he was as the most important part of the ritual began.

Snape swore and Granger cried out as they writhed together.

A the moment of their initial coupling, the candles abruptly blew out.

A brace of spidery grey clouds slowly passed away from the pale yellow surface of the full moon.

Now it alone saw them, and they saw it, alone.

Truly, this was what magic was meant to be.

* * *

Harry always though that the Room of Requirement had a special liking for him.

Lately, since he'd gotten clean, however, it had really been going all out for him.

Tonight was no exception.

He had never seen a bigger bed than the ornate four-poster that awaited him, and the room was all decorated in Gryffindor colours. There was even a red and gold ashtray on the end table with two unopened packs of English Ovals sitting beside it.

He took off his clothes and hung them in the wardrobe, and looked in the drawer of the end table.

It contained all manner of contraceptive device known to Muggle and wizard-kind, and a box of moist towlettes, which could sometimes come in handy.

The pentacle was already drawn on the floor, and the candles and oil burners were in place. A copy of "Everything You Every Wanted To Know About Sex Magick But Were Afraid To Ask " was on the end table next to the cigarettes.

Harry was a secret acolyte; he'd been illegally practising basic sex magick since he was introduced to it about two years ago by an older witch.

The ancient ecstatic rites of Sex Magick with their emphasis on the mystical, the revelatory and the transcendental were the closest thing the staid and traditional British Wizarding World had to sprituality, and Harry was drawn to it for that as much as he was because it had much to do with sex.

This was the most complicated ritual he'd ever tried, and he was hoping it would work.

The best choice for someone to do this ritual would be a master magus of the third degree, the only wizard so qualified anywhere near the vicinity was Snape, and even if Harry was beginning to think the dirty old bastard was alright, he certainly wasn't going to lend him Ginny, not for any reason.

There was a huge stereo in the room and a stack of Harry's favourite records.

He was just putting a Who album to relieve his nervousness when Ginny came in.

"Cor, the Room's really outdone itself, tonight! It looks like one of your Hammer horrors in 'ere! Look at that bed! Look at all these tapestries! Look at all those snacks! And look at you! Harry Potter, High Priest of Fuck."

"God of Fuck, thank you very much." Harry assured her.

Ginny hung her clothes in the closet beside Harry's.

She had fair skin, and long red Lady Godiva hair that fell all the way to her bum, and seeing her walking through the candlelight a certain way, Harry didn't much feel like rubbing oil on her head and reciting spells in three languages.

As for Ginny, she wasn't paying much attention to the unfamiliar words Harry was stumbling over. She knew Elvish, but not Latin or Gaelic, and Harry was bungling the words so much she hardly knew what he was saying.

So she just tried to get into the spirit of the thing by looking at him. When he was fifteen he had the body of a grown man. She'd been sorry to see him drink and dope himself into wrack and ruin, and become pale and painfully skinny and the Firebolt sadly limp half the time.

Sobriety and the Snape midnight boot camp agreed with Harry. He was looking like his old self again, a bit taller, a bit broader in the shoulders, wirier, a little more depth to his voice and his chest.

And the Firebolt was anything but limp.

Meanwhile, Harry was stumbling over a certain word, snapping Ginny out of her reverie.

It was comical rather than magical, him standing there naked except for his glasses with a hard-on, peering at the book and cursing as he tried to pronounce an Elvish word.

"What's this word, Ginny?" he finally asked.

"E-magol? You were trying to say E-magol? That means "sword", Harry! Didn't you pay any attention in History last year? That's like not knowing how to say "ring". Or forgetting who Gandalf is."

"Not really. I just watched the cartoons. Didn't get around to the books until recently."

"Get on with it, Harry! I'm getting impatient. If you find another word you don't know, just skip it."

After a few more interminably boring and intermittently funny minutes of Harry mangling three languages of which he hadn't the faintest grasp of, he finished the incantation, and put the book and his glasses on the end-table.

"There. Now you'll be even more protected from Professor Crich." He told her.

Ginny was looking at him with an odd expression.

"Wot?" Harry asked.

"Harry, you look dead sexy, and I do feel quite randy, but, quite frankly, I haven't gained any cosmic sense of the deep sexual and metaphysical origins of the universe. Your pentagram is lopsided, your fake tattoos are atrocious and whatever you mixed the wolfsbane with, it wasn't dragon's blood. Yer heart's in the right place, but I think you've made a right cock-up of this whole thing, and it's probably not going to work." Ginny told him.

Harry rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.

She had a point.

"Do you want to do the sex parts, anyway?" he asked, hopefully.

"Of course I do! Don't worry about Crich. If he tries anything with me, I'll bite his head urf. An' that was a pretty good third degree ritual from an amateur. Now let's have a first rate performance from an expert." Ginny encouraged him.

Harry got into the bed with her and Ginny pulled him down into her long red hair.

"You've got all the sex magick I need right here." she told him, crudely, copping hold of the Firebolt.

"I love you, Ginny. You're absolutely fucking brilliant." Harry told her.

He sincerely meant every word.

* * *

Snape was in the home stretch of his third turn at bat, which made the ritual nearly complete. Ands considering the noises Granger was making, he'd hit this one right out of the park.

He released the troops with a loud moan, and, feeling rather dizzy, toppled over onto his back.

His head hung over the end of the bed, and his feet were up by his pillow.

Granger sunk face first into the pillows, and her hands slipped off of the bedpost she'd been clinging to.

"You really should teach a course in sex magick, Snape. It'd be very popular."

Hermione rolled over and found that she'd been talking to his feet.

"What are you doing down there, Sev?" she asked.

"Dying. Would you be so kind as to get the old man his packet of fags and the pumpkin juice? And blow out all those oil lamps before the room catches fire."

Hermione made her way into the kitchen and back on wobbly legs.

Snape was still lying flat on his back the wrong way round on the bed when she came back, but his head wasn't hanging over, anymore

"You're only thirty-eight." She told him.

"I feel like I'm a hundred and eight right now."

Not only could Snape smoke from a prone position, he could also eat and drink. Probably because he had spent much of the seventies flat on his back.

Hermione lay down beside him, and settled into the crook of his arm.

"So the upside of being from a family of maniacal satyrs and nymphomaniacs is that you come from along line of distinguished sex magi?" Hermione asked.

"There's nothing distinguished about my branch of the Prince family tree, but generally, yes. Still, the old man always said you should use all your advantages to the fullest, after all."

"So, do you have a potion that will allow me to walk tomorrow?"

"You'll be fine, Hermione. You're built for it."

Hermione blushed. She was occasionally self conscious about being rather short and built like a girl in an R. Crumb cartoon, but Snape seemed to like it.

Not that she minded.

"Well, if the gods had wanted me to be a good girl, they wouldn't have given me this body."

Snape lit a second fag on the butt of the first.

Hermione could hardly imagine him without a fag tucked in the corner of his mouth. The only place he didn't smoke was in class, because he wasn't allowed to. He even smoked while he was mixing potions. A bad habit, but it hadn't killed his mother or his grandfather yet, so he wasn't about to stop.

"Granger, it's getting late. You should go back to your dorm room."

"After all that?'

"Yes."

"But Sev, I have my own bedroom since I'm Head Girl. Why don't you ever come to it? Why do I always have to come here?"

"You'll come in my quarters or in my office or you'll have to come with someone else." Snape quipped.

"I'm serious!" Hermione warned.

"So am I! How would it look if someone caught me leaving your bedroom at three in the morning?" he asked, taking a drag on the fag.

"The same way it would it look if someone caught me leaving your bedroom at three in the morning." Hermione retorted.

"I have several rooms, here, Hermione, and I'm in the dungeon. There's not a lot of traffic down here. And, as my Student Apprentice, you also have the excuse of working late on a Potions project. Which is often the case. Now, Granger, don't tell me you've been having fantasies of Severus Snape, Sex God as well! What do you want me to do, fly into your window like a bat and service you in kinky ways using exotic positions that would cause both of us to be in pain in the morning before I turn back into a bat and fly away?"

"I'm not interested in all that preposterous bullshit, Snape! All I want is shag or two in me own bed, for fuck's sake!" Hermione replied.

"If that's what you really want, Granger. I'll try to think of something. Still you'd better go back to your room and get some sleep, you'll sleep right through your Hogsmeade weekend. And it's Potter's first Quidditch match tomorrow."

"Do you ever sleep, Sev?"

"Not much."

Hermione knew that when he slept, he was haunted by terrible dreams, because she'd been there through some of them. It was terrible. He'd wake up thrashing and screaming, dripping with sweat and bug-eyed in terror.

"Do you think you'll ever get any peace from those dreams?"

"When Tom Riddle is dead, I'll sleep like a baby." Snape replied.

Hermione yawned.

"Can't I stay here? I'm too tired to walk all the way back to Gryffindor Tower."

"Use the Floo." Snape suggested.

* * *

Around three that morning, Harry was in the kitchen looking for a snack.

For some reason, shagging always made him hungry and he had been ordered by Ginny to go find them some ice cream, the one thing the Room had not thought of.

He was discussing same with one of the house elves when someone who looked very like his friend Ron strutted into the kitchen, singing a Spencer Davis Group song.

"I'm a man yes I am and I can't help but love you so. Oh. Hello, Harry. I don't suppose you're looking for ice cream. All of the sudden I gotta have some fuckin' ice cream." Ron said.

Harry had to laugh. It was true. Some blokes, all they needed was a good woman to make a man out of them.

Moaning Myrtle must have been some kind of bird.

"So the spell worked. Well, was it worth it?" Harry asked.

"You bet your ass it worked." Ron said, chuckling in a manful way.

"Well, what was she like?"

"What was she like? What's it like in Heaven? Let me tell you! Harry, oh my God, she's gorgeous. Her hair, and her lips and her beautiful blue eyes. Face like an angel, Harry. And her legs, oh her legs. And her tits. Oh man, her tits. And her lips, and her thighs and her gorgeous arse. She was perfect. And so so so unberalivably fucking horny. She wanted it so bad And lemme tell you, I fucking well gave it to her. And I can't wait to give it to her again. Finest in the world, I'm telling you. I can't wait for tomorrow .Tomorrow, I'm going to bend her over the sink and give it to her doggy style." Ron announced, misty eyed.

Harry just laughed.

"Maybe you can find some way to make her real forever."

"I wish I could, Harry. It's not just lust. I'm in love. I thought I loved her before, but now I'm sure. I don't ever want to touch another woman, I don't ever want to look at another woman. All I want is Myrtle. And you know what? I'm gonna have my Mum and Dad send me drum kit up and I'm gonna start practising with Fred and George." Ron decided.

"I always thought you should. It doesn't seem fair, Ron. I mean Myrtle has just as much right to live, I mean, well maybe since she was killed by a magical creature and her ghost hasn't passed over, there just might be a way."

"I never thought of that! Maybe I'll ask Dumbledore. He might know."

"I wouldn't Ron. At least not until after you graduate."

One of the house elves came back with three large ice cream sundaes, two hot fudge and one caramel.

"You'd better take the caramel one, Harry. Ginny and I are both allergic to caramel."

"I know. Ron, I wasn't lying. I do love her."

"I believe you, Harry. Look, they don't even melt."

"And they won't make you fat. I just love magic."

"Yeah, me too."

The next day was Saturday, after all, so Ron and Ginny and Harry sat up alone in their robes and jammies, eating ice cream in the Gryffindor common room, laughing and talking and having a good time.

"I walked past the Head Girl's room to ask Hermione if she wanted to come and have a sundae with us. No answer. I'll bet she's not in there." Harry said.

"Who does she think she's kidding? She's with the Beast. He's probably giving her the third degree as we speak." Ginny replied, laughing.

"That's what I think, too." Harry agreed.

"So do I." Ginny agreed.

"What? Why?" Ron exploded.

Harry wasn't sure he should tell them all he'd seen the old boy giving Hermione the old high hard one on his desk. It seemed disloyal to him, and after all, Snape had done a lot for Harry in the past few months.

"Think about it, Ron. Who always stays late after Potions class?" Harry asked.

"Who have you never seen with anyone at all since Viktor Krum?" Ginny added.

"Who's always jumping to Snape's rescue?"

"And who was assuring us all summer that Dumbledore couldn't really be dead and that things were going to be better this year?"

"Who spends more time in the dungeons than any apprentice reasonably has to?"

"And they're both from Liverpool."

Ron thought about it.

"She always says she prefers mature men. Always saying how she doesn't want anything to do with boys. Educated men." Ron said

"Snape, Snape, and Snape. " Harry concluded.

"Oh well. Takes all sorts, I suppose." Ron decided equivocally.

Privately, he thought it was bullshit and it was disgusting, but he didn't say anything.

* * *

In the wee hours of the morning, Snape emerged from his dungeons to do a bed check.

Oliver almost took him by surprise.

"I'm very tired, tonight, Oliver. I'm in no mood for your childish games. Stop skulking in the shadows and get on with telling me whatever the fuck it is you want?" Snape snapped

Crich laughed, throatily.

He had an animal's blood in his veins, and when he saw Hermione walking coolly from the Head Girl's room to the loo and back again, as he awaited a certain pair of 7th year Gryffindor twins for a little late night assignation, his keen sense of smell picked up the faint but inimitable smell of sex that still clung to her clothes and her body.

If you examined her carefully, which he was trained as an auror to do, you could see where her robes were a bit wrinkled, her hair a little mussed, her face ever so slightly flushed. And her pupils were still dilated from pleasure.

His own business finished, Crich lay in waited for Snape to do his bed check, so he could take the piss out of him.

"Severus, you dog, you!" he said, digging at Snape's ribs

"Do you mind, Oliver? It's very late. I want to get back to me rooms. And I don't know what you're talking about."

Crich laughed.

Snape was your typical dour humourless thick Northerner with his fishy-eyed glance and his ludicrous Scouse accent.

"Why would Albus say if he knew?"

Snape knew an attempt at blackmail when he heard one.

But that was just Crich's style.

"Albus does know, Oliver. Don't try to threaten me. Unlike you, I'm not in the habit of shagging flocks of my female students. Miss Granger is the one and only one. We have …an arrangement. Which began, I might add, when she was 16 and thoroughly legal. And quit sniffing at my robes!"

"Who's sniffing?"

"I know just as much about the Dark Arts as you, and I know when a werewolf's sniffing!"

"I can't help it, Severus. She smells so good."

"Get your own, Oliver. And make an effort to see to it she's not a student. Or at least not underage. If you put one of these girls in the club, and she's 15, you know your probation will be revoked and you'll go straight to Azkaban."

"Me? You now I never get caught. So, does she taste good, too?"

"Crich!"

Snape got out his wand.

"Sorry. You're right, though. I'll go into town, maybe find meself a nice fresh graduate or three."

"Do that. Just make sure you're not up to any of your old tricks you perfected at Tom Riddle's knee. And keep your pie hole shut about Miss Granger. In fact, if I were you I would stay the fuck away from Miss Granger. If you do anything to harm her, and if you so much as give her a slap on the arse, I'll make you sorry your mother ever met your father, Crich."

"I shall be as silent as the grave, Severus. And I'll be sure to leave your little girl alone." Crich chuckled.

"If you start flapping your jaws, or using your paws, I'll see you in it, Oliver. And I won't use magic to put you there." Snape rejoined.

He continued down the hallway.

"Don't get all high any mighty on me, Snape! Chasing the dragon didn't keep you from takin' witches to bed two at a time! Hypocrisy will get you nowhere, you ugly, horny old Death Eater bastard!" Crich roared after Snape.

He hoped that the greatest possible number of students had heard him, and laughed uproariously at his great jest as he made his way back to his rooms.

* * *

Harry's didn't have to worry about getting up early tutoring sessions with Professor Snape took place in the early afternoon on Saturdays, and Sundays, rather than in the evening.

As if the Professor had something to do that took up the after hours of his days off.

Harry thought about the way he and Ginny and Ron had made light of Hermione being Snape's secret girlfriend, and how disgusted Ron seemed about it.

Harry himself always thought it was a little on the disgusting side, but extremely funny.

But, lately, his opinion of the Potions master had been changing.

After all, Snape was Dumbledore's Number One Spy, and he always had been, so Dumbledore trusted him implicitly. And sure Harry could recall Snape being sneaky, and pedantic, and unfair and so on, but he could also recall the Potions master saving his life on, oh, two or three separate occasions.

Four or five if you counted CPR in Dumbledore's' office and helping Harry meet the terms of his probation. And he was sort of getting to know Snape as a person, seeing him every day. He discovered that Snape did have a sense of humour, but in a very dry and ironic John Cleese sort of way. His comments on Professor Trelawney often broke Harry up, and once he found that as he was hurrying towards completion of the lesson, Snape was , too.

"Professor, are you in a hurry because you don't want to miss _Monty Python and the Holy Grail _in the Great Hall, tonight?"

Thursday was movie night at Hogwarts, a new innovation of Professor Dumbledore's, to make the Muggle-borns feel; more secure and introduce the purebloods to the finer point of Muggle culture.

"Yes, Potter. And if you don't get this defence right I will turn you into a newt and you will have to see the film from my pocket."

Now at the end of the Saturday lesson, Professor Snape was in a big hurry because, Harry thought, he most likely, like any man might have, had plans with his old lady for the Saturday night.

Maybe they were going to the match.

He wondered where Snape took Hermione when he took her out.

"Professor Snape, before you go, I wanted to tell you something."

"What is it, Potter? I'm in a hurry."

He also seemed a bit tired, like any man might be, after a heavy Friday night.

Randy old Scouser bastard.

"Well, you're not half bad, are you? I mean you obviously play favourites with your house, but you're a Slytherin, that's' your nature, innit it? An you go out of your way to break everybody's balls in class. Mind, you may be a mean, evil, wicked old screw, but who else would want to be the one to always have to straighten me out? It's sort of like Dumbledore was the lenient parent, you know like Mom who's a pushover and you were like Dad who didn't let the kid get away with the shit that Mom did."

Harry chuckled at the analogy, but Snape didn't seem amused.

"Anyway, I don't know why you've done everything you've done for me. I guess it's because of my mother. Well, I'm sure she would have been grateful, and so am I. Beggars can't be choosers, after all."

"Someone has to keep you in line, Potter. And since I'm already the villain around this place, why not me? I am, indeed a mean, evil, wicked old screw. It's why I'm still alive. Albus, as you know, has his reasons why he'd let you get away with this and that, and I do think he can be like, as you put it, the pushover Mum who lets the kids get away with everything. Still, I never thought it was right to make you the scapegoat for Tom Riddle. Your parents would have been in Dumbledore's office a thousand times telling him that he shouldn't put you and your friends in harm's way without adults to help you. And they both would have volunteered to do so. But, as we both know, they're not here. Lily was my best friend in the world. We were something like you and Hermione, your Mum and I. No matter what I did, she always found a way to forgive me. She helped me get clean, so she most likely saved me life. I couldn't return the favour to Lily, so it's my duty to return it to you." Snape explained.

Harry lit up.

He was as uncomfortable as Snape was with the turn the conversation had took.

"Professor, does this mean you'll be rooting for Gryffindor, today?" Harry asked, canging the subject as fast as possible.

"Sorry, Potter. I've got two galleons on Ravenclaw."

"What? Five says I catch the snitch before the end of the first half! Double or nothing!"

"Double or nothing, and three days detention?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Done! And if you win, but not in the first half, you still have to pay up."

"Wicked old screw!"

"Thank you, Potter."


	7. The Quidditch Match REVISED & UPDATED!

**Chapter Seven: The Quidditch Match**

Harry left Snape's office in a bit of a daze.

For one thing, he couldn't believe that on this day of all days he'd gone for his usual tutoring appointment with Snape, especially after the heavy night he'd had. He really couldn't remember getting up and getting dressed and leaving the Room of Requirement, but evidently he had, because he somehow ended up in Snape's office trying to focus on keeping Snape out of his thoughts.

He couldn't have kept a Muggle from the Psychic Friends Network out of his thoughts.

All he could think of was Quidditch, Quidditch, Quidditch..

This was his first Quidditch match in a few years. When his leisure time focus shifted from sport to dope, boozing, balling, and forbidden magics, Harry's interest in the game and his performance waned. Had he stayed at the top of his game, and not been booted for assaulting Malfoy, he could have been Captain by now, but given the circumstances, he was happy to have got his position as Seeker back.

He wasn't sure if his old enemy had petitioned for the Quidditch ban on Harry to be lifted as a gesture of solidarity in the fight against Voldemort, or because Quidditch wasn't the same for Malfoy without being able to count on an lively exchange of personal fouls between them out on the pitch.

Of course, Harry would have to share the limelight with Gryffindor's other Quidditch celebrity already being courted by every university in Britain, the "Killer Queen" of the Quidditch pitch, Miss Ginervra Weasley.

They called Ginny the "Killer Queen" not only because she played the game ferociously enough to skate right up to the point of unacceptable violence, but because rumour had it that she was a spook for CAULDRON who enjoyed seducing the Dark Wizards who were her targets before sending them spinning into oblivion.

The truth was more complicated and less palatable, but the "Killer Queen" bit pushed papers and got arses in seats.

Besides, the way Harry saw it, who was he to interfere with someone else's legend?

With him as Seeker and Ginny as chaser, the odds were on Gryffindor, and the stadium was packed, the bets were in, and Harry knew that the whole school, and every hoper, groper, doper and no-hoper in the Wizarding World would be jammed into the stands to cheer him on.

Or watch him crash and burn.

They'd probably enjoy both, equally, unless they had money on him,

All the bets were in and wizards in every pub for miles were praying on they pay packets that the lions would not play like lambs.

Then he had to go and make it worse, placing that ridiculous bet with Snape. At leats he knew if he blew it, the wicked old screw wouldn't say "I told you so, Potter" when he collected his winnings.

Still, it was a relief to be feeling well, strong, awake and aware for the match, as opposed to drunk or hung over or worn down. Despite his nerves, Harry was feeling good; he felt like he could have beaten the British Quidditch team, if he had to.

He only wished the game wasn't against Ravenclaw. As if he wasn't under enough pressure, already.When they played Ravenclaw, Cho always came to the games. She was the Seeker for the Glasgow Gremlins, but never missed a Ravenclaw match.

He didn't know what it was about her that made him feel the way he did, all squishy and maudlin and sentimental.

It could have been because she was the first girl he'd ever really had a thing for, or because she was his first girlfriend, his first love, really, the one who got away, or maybe it was that Cho reminded him of a more innocent time in his life, before multiple deaths and general degeneracy and debauchery had become the norm, but she was like a tiny bright garden of untrammelled purity and happiness in the cynical confines of Harry's debauched junkie soul.

The funny thing was, Cho wasn't the ingénue type, at all. She was one of those girls who was a real jock, a "One of the guys" type of girl. Her family was from Glasgow, and she was your typical brash Scot, despite her family being Asian.

Harry could count her amongst his friends, but he still carried a torch for her, just the same.

"Harry, are you awright?" Ron asked him.

It was about time to fly out onto the field.

Was he alright? Cho was going to be there; the whole school had come out to see what he had left, he had a bet on with Snape and he was stone cold bleeding sober.

Harry smiled at Ron in a way that Ron found disturbing.

"No. I'm fucking terrified." Harry confessed.

"When those Bludgers start coming at your head, you'll snap out of it." Ginny assured him.

She finished typing up the end of the long braid she'd plaited her hair into.

"Awright. Let's kill 'em!" she enthused

When they played Slytherin, Harry and Ron always worried that she might mean it literally.

Harry hung back for a bit, took a deep breath, and flew out last, right after the band stopped playing "Killer Queen" for Ginny.

When he flew out onto the pitch, the roar from the crowd was deafening.

Harry had never seen so many people packed into the stands in his life. There hadn't been this many arses in seats at the Tri-Wizard Tournament, where every witch and wizard that could walk, crawl or fly to Hogwarts showed up to watch him get his bollocks handed to him.

And here they all were again, cheering like idiots for their well-beloved Boy Who Lived, who was going to save their equally well-beloved arses.

Their enthusiasm was infectious. After all, who doesn't love a comeback.

Harry made up his mind right then and there that he was going to give these punters the show they came to see. If he fucked himself up a treat, fuck it. It wouldn't be the first time.

Despite his best intentions, Harry wasn't playing too well in the first ten minutes or so of the game; he was too distracted by his nerves, his ego, and the crowd.

Then, he took a Bludger upside the head, which was, albeit painful, a wonderfully clarifying experience.

He was almost glad he got cracked on the crust; the combination of the excruciating pain and the necessity of saying on the Firebolt and awake, or face plummeting to his death cleared his head and made him focus on the game.

He pulled himself out of the freefall he went into when the Bludger knocked him out cold, shook his head a little, and flew right back into the thick of the match.

Lee Jordan announced the whole episode, breathlessly.

"…and Potter is back in the match! That looks like blood trickling down his face, but he's giving the crowd the thumbs up and it he's going back into the game…"

It was an exciting match. If Harry wasn't up to his usual game before the first Bludger hit him, but the second really seemed to get him in that sporting frame of mind.

"…and Potter takes a second Bludger to the back of the head! And he doesn't so much as tremble! This is amazing! He's still on his broom, he's still in the game! He didn't even flinch! Potter knows this is his match and he isn't going to let a little thing like a compound fracture of the skull stop him! What a game.!"

That Harry managed to stay on his broom the whole time was a marvel to the crowd but not to Harry; he was by now used to functioning while completely incapacitated.

He was close to same. There was blood running down the side of his face, and his ears were ringing like the bells in Hogwarts Tower, but Harry wasn't thinking about it, because the Snitch was in his sights.

He pointed the Firebolt into a dangerous nosedive, plummeting towards the ground after his quarry. A few drops of blood spattered into his glasses as the snitch neared the ground and Harry stretched his long wiry body across his broom, straining with every muscle in his body to grab it.

"…and Potter dives for the snitch! He's racing towards the ground! He has to pull up. He isn't pulling up! Holy shit, he isn't pulling up! Merlin's balls, now this is what I call Quidditch!.."

Lee wasn't the only one who was excited. Even the Haedmaster didn't notice his use of profanity.

The crowd were on their feet, and so was Dumbledore.

Harry was injured and had aimed his broom at a ninety degree angle to the ground, which was rushing up to meet him at an alarming rate of speed.

Was he mad?

Ginny didn't think so.

"That's the way, Harry! For death and glory! Dive, you daft motherfucker! Dive!" she screamed, cheering him on, swooping about menacingly on the off chance that anyone on the Ravenclaw team would be fool enough to follow him.

Lee was practically hyperventilating.

"…I've never seen anything like this in the entire history of Quidditch! There has never been anything like this in the history of Quidditch! It's bleedin' amazing! It's un-fucking-believable! GO, HARRY, GO! YOU CRAZY SON-OF-A-BITCH, GO!..."

The snitch was only a few yards from the ground when Harry closed his fist around it. The hem of his robe touched the earth as he pulled the Firebolt up at another ninety degree angle, screaming back into the air.

After that little stunt, Harry had a bad nosebleed, as well, but he'd won, and that was all that mattered to him.

The crowd went wild.

People were jumping up and down and hooting and screaming and stamping their feet. They were running out onto the field and dancing around.

Lee was practically gibbering like an idiot into the microphone.

"…AND POTTER HAS THE SNITCH! HE'S WON! HARRY POTTER WINS THE GAME FOR GRYFINNDOR IN A DEATH-DEFYING DIVE! THIS IS THE GREATEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPEN TO QUIDDITCH IN A THOUSAND FUCKING YEARS…"

The school band began to play _Back In Black_, in an extremely enthusiastic fashion.

Harry had won, and before the end of the second half.

For the first time in along time Harry really didn't feel like he needed a drink or a fix at all.

* * *

After the game, Harry did a lot of glad-handing, and he and Ginny posed for some slightly-dazed pictures for the Daily Prophet, on the shoulders of his team-mates with the snitch in one hand and blood still trickling down the side of his face.

Then Snape pushed through the crowd and blocked for him as they made their way back to the castle and the infirmary.

Madame Pomfrey expressed her surprise that Harry was still ambulatory , and she sent him off to the showers with a warning that he shouldn't do anything strenuous that night.

He was the only one in the locker room when he finally hit the showers.

In all that ruck, he hadn't seen Cho after the game.

He'd just made fucking Quidditch history; it would have been nice if she would have at least talked to him.

Thinking of her, Harry's own personal Firebolt stood at attention, waiting for something that was never going to be.

He sighed.

Then he was abruptly knocked out of his reverie by somebody rudely opening the shower door.

Harry thought it was on of his team-mates playing a joke on him, but he froze like he had been immobilised when he saw it was Cho

"Oho, would ye look at that! I dinna believe it! The groupies were nae lyin'! No wonder you call it the Firebolt. How d'ye fit that in your pants every morning, Harry?'" Cho laughed, in her gruff Scots manner.

_Say something witty, you berk_. Harry's brain told him.

"I ah, I hit it a few times with a hammer." Harry joked awkwardly.

Cho laughed uproariously.

"Yeah. Sure you do, Harry. I just came ter tell ye that ye must be right out yer fuckin mind! That fuckin' move ye done to win the game, after getting hit wi' two Bludgers. That was fuckin' brilliant. Suicidal and reckless and completely barkin' fuckin' mad. All the elements of a good Seeker. Ye're one of the best, Harry. Ye're crazy, but that's the best fuckin' Quidditch match I ever saw!" She told him.

"Thanks." Was all Harry had wit to reply.

His head was string to spin, and it wasn't from the hits he'd taken on it. His mouth was dry, his forehead was hot, his legs were rubbery and he felt like all the blood in his body had rushed from his rubbery limbs into his dick, which was fairly vibrating.

"Thanks." Harry stammered.

Cho was obviously not fazed by being in the locker room with a naked bloke; but, then gain she was on a co-ed team, so Harry tried to play it cool.

She just stood there and talked to him, but she might as well have been speaking in Martian, for all Harry noticed.

He washed the soap out of his hair, and tried to pretend this wasn't happening.

"Does it ever go down, Harry?" she asked, laughing.

"While you're standing not three feet away from me, and I'm stark bollock naked? If I dropped dead, maybe." Harry commented.

"Poor Harry. I never did give ye yer due, did I? Strung ye along for months, dropped yer like a blast-ended skrewt. Now I'm torturing ye again, am I?" she asked.

Harry nodded, helplessly

Cho turned off his shower.

"What the hell. Won't be the first time for either of us, or the last, will it? I know someplace nearby, where we can be alone. So, Harry, how about you show me what makes all the groupies swoon over the Boy Who Lived. I mean size ain't shit if you don't know how to use it." She challenged him.

_This is it. I can die tomorrow, because today is going to be the greatest day of my entire fucking life._ Harry thought, joyously.

"You'll be sorry you said that." Harry promised her.

* * *

In his generally orgiastic and frenzied sex life, Harry had done the deed in just about any circumstance you could imagine, but on the top of a pile of mats in the storage room of the Hogwarts gym was not one of them, not was it the circumstances he would have preferred to make love to the girl of his dreams, but beggars can't be choosers.

It was a good hour and a half, maybe two before Harry and Cho left the storage room, and they needed another shower.

"You're fucking right, Harry, I'm sorry I said what I said. Yer're quite a bloke."

"Thank you. So, um, Cho, I mean, do you want me to take you out for a drink? I mean I can have a butterbeer, going to pubs doesn't bother me. And you know, maybe…"

"Ah, well, I was gonna go out with some of the lads on the team, tonight." Cho told him.

She had her bath-robe on, already.

"Oh. Well, maybe we could do something later on this week."

"Well, Harry, yunno, I get pretty busy. But I'll seeya around, right? I mean, it was great, you were great, but, tryouts for the Nationals are coming up and, we got quite a few road games planned, ah, yunno how it is, right? I mean we're still mates and all but, yunno." Cho replied.

"Oh. Yea, well I hope you make the National team That's cool. I'll, ah. I'll see you around, then."

"Cheers mate. I had a really good time."

"So did I."

"Good game, Harry! Both of them. Bye. I'll see yer, around."

Harry was alone in the locker room again, watching the swinging door.

He suddenly had the feeling he wanted to apologise to every witch he had ever given the brush off to, but he'd never done it that abruptly. He'd even been back to see that witch he'd cursed, to see if he could get her some help.

He suddenly felt like a complete fucking toerag. All these years he'd had Cho up on a pedestal, as an image of something he didn't even know what and that she never was, and although it had nothing to do with reality, now that it was gone, he felt just horrible.

Harry felt disgusted with himself. He couldn't leave well enough alone. Now he'd managed to take the last clean, pure, beautiful thing in his filthy, fucked-up, sleazy old junkie life and fling mud all over it.

He felt completely bereft.

Then something happened that the hard-hearted young ex-junkie could scarcely believe.

"Fuck me. I think I'm going to cry." Harry said.

And then, he did.

* * *

Meanwhile, practically the whole school, faculty and staff and all were at the Three Broomsticks, celebrating Gryffindor's and Harry's big victory, and nobody could find Harry.

Ron started to worry. He and Ginny and Hermione had anxiously been watching the door.

"It's not like our Harry to sit out his own victory party. You know, Ron, he took quite a hit to the head, today. Two of 'em. He looked absolutely fucking witless when Snape led him off to the infirmary. Maybe he's passed out, somewhere." Ginny said.

"I hadn't thought of that. We'd better go take the secret passage and look for him." Hermione suggested.

Ron drank down the last of his butterbeer.

"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go!" he said

The three of them used the passage that let out in the third floor corridor and split up to check the school for Harry.

They met up by the Locker Rooms. Ginny and Hermione went to check the Girl's Locker Room, and Ron went into the Men's.

Harry was sitting on a bench, wet and naked, crying his eyes out in great, harsh, gulping sobs and wails like a dying animal.

There were big fat tears streaming out of his eyes and snot dribbled out of his nose.

"He's in here! He's in here!" Ron shouted.

"By the Mother, Harry, what's the matter?" Ron asked.

He got Harry some towels, and wiped off his face, and put one around his friend's shoulders.

Harry just kept crying, and he was shaking, so Ron put another towel around him, and just hugged his friend

Ginny and Hermione came running in.

"Is he hurt? Harry, are you hurt?" Ginny asked.

Harry wanted to stop crying, but he couldn't get hold of himself.

"He can't stop cryin'. It's awright, Harry. Everybody cries. You just cry yourself out. It'll make you feel better. That's what Mum says." Ron told him.

Ginny and Hermione sat down with Ron on the bench, and they hugged Harry, too.

Harry didn't realise he had that many tears left in him. He lost it in a way that made what he did at that fateful WAND meeting look like a sniffle, but when he;d cried himself out, he really did feel better.

What the fuck did a bloke like him want with clean, pure and beautiful, anyway? If he ever had it he wouldn't know what to do with it? And who needed all that hearts and flowers bullshit when you had real friends?

Real friends, and a girl like Ginny.

Hard as a diamond and just as beautiful.

She was hugging him the hardest and closest of all.

"I love you guys. I really do. Especially you, Ginny. I don't care what every dumb bitch of a witch and a fat lot of toerag numbnuts wizards say about you. You're the best girl a bloke like me could ever want. I love you. I really fuckin' do." Harry told Ginny.

Hermione and Ron were surprised, but Ginny was absolutely gobsmacked.

"Yeah, well, I love you too, you crazy motherfucker." Ginny replied.

"Is this supposed to be romantic?' Ron squawked.

Hermione elbowed him in the ribs.

"Owwwww!"

"Shut the fuck up, you! Do I say anything to you about Myrtle? At least Harry and I don't go around breaking the laws of man and nature on a nightly basis! " Ginny demanded.

Abruptly, Ron shut the fuck up.

"I thought so. Well, you help Harry get his shit together. Hermione and I will go back to the Three Broomsticks and tell everybody he went on the nod in the locker room. We'll see you as soon." Ginny suggested.

"Okay. I think I need another shower, then I'll get dressed and come bask in my insane moment of suicidal glory." Harry quipped, his voice still a little shaky.

"I'll buy you a packet of fags, an' have a butterbeer and some oie and chips waitin' on you." Ginny replied.

She kissed Harry and have him a playful punch on the arm, and then she and Hermione left.

"What's wrong with the two of you? Why do you act like this?' Ron asked.

"I dunno, Ron. We're not the sentimental type, neither of us. Besides, it's easier for you. The worst has already happened. Myrtle's already dead. What have you got to lose?" Harry observed.

He left Ron to ponder that as he put himself together, and then the two of them went to the victory party, already in progress.

Quite unexpectedly, Cho came to the victory party. She bought Harry a butterbeer, and he bought her a firewhiskey, and said he'd see her at the next Ravenclaw match, and she cheerfully agreed.

And a good time was had by all, as they celebrated far into Saturday night and Sunday morning.

All except Professor Snape.

* * *

The night of the Quidditch match Professor Snape was working late in his lab because the Drak Mark had been tingling all day in a way that let him know that the witching hours would bring a familiar face to his fire.

Snape sat in a chair in front of his hearth.

"Haven't heard from you for awhile, Tom."

Lord Voldemort's opiate nightmare of a face manifested a sort of smile.

"You've been busy, Severus. I did not wish to risk interrupting your project with Mr. Potter. I'm not sure what you're planning, but I'm pleased with your progress."

"Every day that he grows closer to me, he grows closer to you." Snape said, obliquely.

It was true, in some sense.

"What's this I hear about you protecting some mudblood from Oliver's advances? Playing favourites, Severus?"

"Granger is my apprentice. I need her for my research. Besides that, she's mine. I took her, I own her, and she belongs to me. You know I don't anyone trying to take from me what is mine. Especially Oliver. If you're going to pick that werewolf bastard over me, Tom, after all I've done for you…"

Voldemort laughed.

"Severus, you know you're my left hand wizard! My spy, and my heir. If Crich is a thorn in your side, if he's jeopardising your mission or even annoying you in any way, I'll have him killed, of course. I have a few apprentices who need to prove their loyalty to me."

"I appreciate the offer, Tom, but if anybody kills Oliver Crich, it's going to be me." Snape snarled.

He didn't have to pretend to feel hate and anger for Crich.

"Then I would not dream of depriving you of the pleasure. Soon, Severus, you won't have to be deprived of any of the pleasures of life. The Wizarding World will belong to you and to me, to do with what we want. As soon as Potter and Dumbledore are out of the way, the rest of those spineless jellyfish will bend to our will."

"I don't doubt that, Tom." Snape replied.

He didn't.

Snape always had the sneaking suspicion that if the movement was deprived of its heroes, people like Potter and Albus and a few others, then the laziness and cowardice of the Wizarding World that had left Potter to twist in the wind would cause all the tossers to capitulate, en-masse.

Voldemort chuckled at the knee-jerk loathing of humanity that Snape was unable to suppress.

The Professor relaxed his grip on his boundless loathing of Voldemort, leading the Dark Lord to believe that all his poisonous vitriol was intended for the great mass of humanity.

Even Voldemort found himself flinching, choking, gasping before the firey, sulphurous tide of malignant hatred that flowed like cold, black blood from his protégé.

"Calm yourself, Severus. Our time will come."

"Not soon enough for me. I had better get back to work."

"Very well. I have some work of my own to do tonight. You'll be hearing from me again, soon."

The face faded from the fire, and Snape made himself stop wondering what sort of work Tom Riddle had in mind.

He went back to his lab, lit a cigarette, smoked it, lit a second on the butt of the first, and threw himself back into his work.


	8. Fruit of the Poisoned Tree

**Chapter Eight: Fruit of the Poisoned Tree**

Harry couldn't sleep that night, not at all.

For the next week or so, his sleep was fitful.

It would have been nice to let his grades slip and go on a binge; but if for no other reason than facing the wrath of Snape, Harry wasn't about to do that.

Lying awake night after night, Harry realised that his problem was that he had no idea what the fuck was going on anymore, at all. Being a deluded junkie drunk who deified a rough and tumble Quidditch seeker into a goddess and held most of the rest of the world in contempt may not have been strictly in conjunction with reality, but it was the Devil that Harry knew, and he was used to it.

Reality seemed so…unreal.

Like a hot air balloon missing a few sandbags, Harry had slipped his moorings.

He felt like a supporting character in his own life.

Of course, after he'd degenerated into a smack-addled drunken fuck-up, he'd been left out of the loop with respect to much of the Order's doings, but it was larger than that.

People were always lying to him, keeping secrets from him, doing things that were supposed to protect him or teach him a lesson that only succeeded in pissing him off or confusing the fuck out of him.

He kept thinking about what Ron had asked him, and he'd come to the conclusion that it was because both he and Ginny were sure that one of them was going to die and the other would be alone with the memory, forever.

Why? Because the deck was stacked against them and in favour of Voldemort, wasn't it?

Or was it? If things were no longer so dire, as Dumbledore had alluded to, why weren't they? What the fuck was going on? And what was his part in it?

Now that he was sober enough to know which end was up, he was really beginning to get paranoid. Everybody was keeping secrets from him, as usual. What was the Ministry Mutiny, anyway? He wanted to know just what had happened over the summer at the Ministry, and where was Voldemort? And what was it that had prompted the Aurors to sack Professor Crich? For that matter, why had Dumbledore given Crich a second chance? Why did Snape hate Crich so much?

And speaking of Dumbledore, he hadn't said one word to Harry about what his role in the events that were already playing out was. Had he been utterly passed over and relegated from hero to patsy due to his indiscretions? Or had he always been the patsy right from the start? And just what did Snape have to do with it? The old boy's greasy mitts were all over everything, that much Harry knew.

Snape.

Snape, Snape, Snape!

All roads seemed to lead back to the greasy git. It was as if every question he had and every answer he sought originated in the Potions Master. Somehow he was the key to everything and Harry didn't know how or why, and he wasn't sure he really wanted to.

His ex-junkie paranoia and the years of secrets and lies weighed heavily on Harry, though, and he got to the point where he just couldn't stand it anymore, and he knew he had to have the truth, to know if any of his suspicions and conjectures and half-formed wild delusions of persecution and grandeur had any basis in reality, at all.

Fucking brilliant.

Knowing he needed someone to give him some truth whether he could handle it or not was one thing. Finding that someone was altogether more difficult. It came down to either Snape or Dumbledore, who were the chief plotters in the secret spy war behind the war.

Unfortunately for him, however, Harry didn't think Dumbledore was going to be any more forthcoming with answers than slippery Snape was, so he decided to undertake his a voyage to the headmaster's office at night, and under cover of his Invisibility Cloak, and engage in a little espionage of his own.

As he had hoped, Dumbledore wasn't in.

Harry helped himself to some of the sweets on the desk, and knowing that the headmaster often left little clues around for him to discover, he idly opened a drawer.

"Severus, it's late, maybe we should just talk in the morning."

"Dammnit, Albus, don't put me off!"

"All right, calm down. We'll go in my office."

Had it just been Dumbledore, Harry wouldn't have hid, but he was pretty sure he'd get at least a reprimand from Snape for breaking the rules, especially considering he sounded so pissed off.

Harry pulled out the cavernous bottom desk drawer and, Invisibility Cloak and all, jumped in and pulled it shut just as the Headmaster and the Potions professor came into the office.

"Goddamn it, Albus, I have gone along with all of your plans for the lad!"

"Yes, Severus, you did."

"And you saw, you saw how that latest scene that Harry had to witness nearly destroyed him! He's not a little boy, anymore, and now he's got a reformed junkie's paranoia informing him that 

people he is supposed to trust, implicitly, are still lying to him. I'm sick and fucking tired of it! I think he can be trusted and I think he should be told the truth. The whole entire truth. About everything."

"Yes, Severus, I admit, I was wrong. And I have tried to make amends. Harry may have to fulfil his destiny alone, but that doesn't mean we can't all help him a little more on his way. I also agree with you that Harry must be told about the Mutiny, after this semester, when his probation is over. But as for the whole entire truth about everything? I still say that he mustn't know that. Not just yet."

"Why, Albus? Why? You don't know what it's like for me! Especially now that I'm his sponsor and his tutor! You can't know. I loved Lily. Nobody thinks that a bastard like me is capable of such things, but I did, you know. I still do. She saved me life. She was the best friend I ever had. I've listened to you all these years, Albus, even though I thought you were wrong. I didn't say anything when you sent Harry away to live with that fucking cow Petunia and her loathsome fat husband! Sure, I agreed he had to be hidden for a while until the danger had past. I thought you meant a year or two. Then I thought you meant when he came to Hogwarts. That's seven years I could have had. Seven more years I lost."

"But you didn't lose them, Severus. He's been here."

"The hell I fucking haven't! It didn't work, Albus! Your great fucking plan to save Harry from some horrible fate fucking backfired on you! As usual, I might add! That cow and her husband neglected Harry, and all of the shit we never wanted him to have to face, war, addiction, death, suffering, it all befell him, anyway! Except now I have the fringe fucking benefit of Harry hating me! Or at least holding me in contempt. Now, he's finally beginning to see me as some kind of, I don't know, possibly likeable human being. But the more time he spends with me, the more I can see the idea forming in his mind. He's not a stupid young man! Neither, for that matter is everybody else in the Wizarding World. The older he gets, the more apparent it becomes. Luke has figured it out. So has Granger. You are just fucking lucky that I wear contact lenses!"

"Miss Granger has figured it out? And Lord Malfoy? But, how?"

"Don't play dumb with me. I know you're not that stupid. Still, let's see, shall we? Maybe it's because it's so bloody obvious! One, Harry and I are almost the same height. Two, we have the same build. Three, I have a nasty temper. He has a nasty temper. Four, I have black hair. He has black hair. Five, addiction and insanity run in my family. I'm the chairman of Hogsmeade WAND, and Harry's in recovery. I'm his fucking sponsor, for fuck's sake! The older he gets, the more he looks like me. And I do seem to worry about Harry, oh, a lot! Oh, and then there's the little matter than everybody in the fucking Wizarding World knows, suspects or surmises that I had an affair with Harry's mother! All anyone has to do is connect the dots. I'll tell you fucking what, if Harry asks me if I'm his father I'm not going to fucking lie and tell him no! Damn it, Albus, I am his father! Sometimes I think even you forget that! You can't understand that, you don't have any children of your own! Harry is my son, my only son, my flesh and blood! He's my parents' only grandson, he's one of the last heirs to the Prince blood and they've never met him! The boy's confused; he still has a long way to go towards recovery! How can he ever become a man, and beat his addiction and live his life when he doesn't even know who he is or where he comes from? Not to mention what we're all facing as the end of this war draws near! He needs help, he needs support, he's going to need all the fucking help and support he can get, and he's finally starting to trust me…"

Harry's mind whirled.

_Wait a minute. Snape is my father? SNAPE?! How could I be right about this? The most sick and paranoid of all my sick and paranoid delusions is true? This is like Star Wars. Okay, Snape isn't quite as bad as Darth Vader, but how could I be right about this? Why doesn't anybody tell me these things? _

"…I wouldn't have said a word if James and Lily were alive. Because they would be here in this office, saying what I'm saying now. But James and Lily are dead, and they died saving Harry's life. I risked my life to tell you they were all in danger, didn't I? So it's up to me, now, Albus. Up to me to make sure that our son, and when I say our, I mean James' and Lily's and mine, that our son above all and regardless of any prophecies or goddamn Tom Riddle is safe. Even Sirius agrees with me that the lad should know. Harry has a father. Me! And he needs his father. Now more than ever." Snape continued.

_That's why Malfoy told me all about what Snape went through. He was trying to tell me that I should be brave like…my father. _

_Merlin's beard._

_By the Mother._

_Jesus, help me._

"First of all, Severus, I know exactly what it is have a troubled son that you love and care for and endlessly worry about. That would be you, now, wouldn't it? I've been a father to you since you were ten years old. As such, Harry is like my grandson. You don't know what it's like for me. I have to balance the needs of the Wizarding World against my own selfish desires that my son and my grandson will not die at the hands of the enemy. And second of all, knowing how you must feel, I wouldn't dream of telling you that you can't protect your child, that you have to stand back and let him face his peril on his own. Nor have I tried to prevent you from placing yourself in a position to 

be a mentor or a teacher or even a father figure to Harry. But as you say, Harry is still fragile, and only just beginning to trust you. What if he doesn't react well to the news that you're his father? He certainly might find it distressing that you and his best friend are involved."

"I think Harry's already figured that out. Damn it, don't drag Hermione and I into this, it has nothing to do with it! But, since you mentioned it, that's another thing! I can't tell Hermione the truth either! I have to lie to her as well! I have to lie to everyone all the time, and I have had to for almost twenty years! Sometimes I feel like we're all just pawns on your chessboard, Albus! You and fucking Tom Riddle, playing chess with all our lives!"

Absently Snape reached for a piece of candy and crunched up the lemon drop.

Food always made him feel better.

"Maybe so, Severus, but I'm not the one who began the game. Still, our side has to be the one to win it. Or the Wizarding World will fall into the hands of an evil equivalent to the Third Reich. Death camps for Muggle-borns, for dissidents, for anybody who disagrees with Chancellor Voldemort. And there is no world at large to save us. We must save ourselves. Or you and I and Harry and Hermione and perhaps millions like us will certainly die horrendous deaths. Harry is our only hope, Severus. You can love him, and support him, and you can stand by him at the moment he fulfils his destiny. I do, and I plan to be, and so will all of us. But if you do anything to jeopardise that destiny, the way I did letting him see what looked like me killing you, we are all of us lost. Your home, your students, your son, your whole world. And mine, too." Dumbledore replied.

Snape sat down heavily in a chair.

His father was made an orphan by a Nazi bullet when his grandmother killed herself after the news that Tobias Snape, Senior had perished in an unspeakable fashion in a Nazi POW camp. That torpedoed his father's life, and Snape's as well, so Albus always got him right in one of his few soft spots when he started comparing Voldemort to Hitler.

It was bloody un-fucking –fair of him, really, but it took the wind out of Snape's sails every time.

"Why is it, Albus, that life is never fair?" Snape muttered into his hand.

"I have asked myself that question many times over the last one hundred and twenty odd years. Very odd years, some of them. And I don't know, either. I just know that it isn't." Dumbledore replied.

Harry, meanwhile, was trying to make sense of it all.

He couldn't believe it, but it was true. Severus Snape was his father. Snape. Of all the people in the world. How the fuck did that happen? His mother must have had an affair with Snape, her 

childhood friend, while she was engaged to his Dad and Snape was a Death Eater? And a drunk and a junkie and Voldemort's heir apparent, a vicious dope-pushing thug. Or worse, while she was married to his Dad. Was she crazy? Was everybody crazy? And what about his Dad? Why would James put up with that? Let's get married, oh by the way, I'm pregnant with the bloke you hate's child. You know, my old buddy, Snape. Don't worry, I'm sure the baby won't be born addicted to anything. We'll have more of our own later, Jim, dear.

And James was just okay with that?

_Oh My God, I was stealing the ingredients to make smack from him, the ones he wrote in his potions book when he was my age to make his own dope and I actually ended up in the room while my own father was shagging his old lady rotten, and she just happens to be my best friend. Jesus Christ, what a family!_

Harry was so shocked by the revelations that he had come out of the drawer and he was pacing the floor of Dumbledore's office. He still had the Invisibility Cloak on, so Snape couldn't see him, but his eyes met the Headmaster's and he realised Dumbledore could.

The Headmaster looked shocked, and then unhappy, and then sadly resigned.

"Severus, it's late. Go back to your bed. After Voldemort is dead, you can tell Harry what you wish. Unless, of course he figures it out himself. Then you can tell him the truth. But until then, we must keep him safe, and not let any of this out."

Snape got up out of the chair.

"I'll go back to bed. But I won't sleep. I hope to the Mother that Harry still can. And I don't see how you can."

Not looking too pleased, Snape left the office in a huff.

"He won't stay mad at me. He'll get over it. He always does. So, had you come to ask me, Harry, if Severus was your father?"

"Among other things, yes. But they can wait. Snape was right. I figured it out. Headmaster, what the Hell is going on? Why…what…how can this be true? But it is true, isn't it?"

"Yes, Harry. Although James Potter loved you, and accepted you as his son and gave you his name, Severus Snape is your father." Dumbledore gently confirmed.

"It's just like Star Wars, for fuck's sake! Darth Vader is my father, and I'm the only hope, and I have to kill the Emperor, or everybody's screwed. " Harry said, slumping in the chair Snape had just been slumped in.

"I'm sorry, Harry, I have no control over the perpetuation of archetypes in the universe. And Severus is no Darth Vader. Miss Granger is the best witch in her year, maybe in this whole school, and a very good judge of character, and she can see that. And so was your mother."

Harry leapt up and started pacing again.

"The funny thing is, it all makes a sick kind of sense. Why was Snape always flapping over me like a great greasy bat? Because he's my father and he wanted to look after me. Why did he keep saving me? Ditto. At least now I know how I could have become a drunk and a junkie with a cruel streak a mile wide and a violent temper. And why I'm so arrogant and sneaky and determined to do things my way or no way. I used to think: my father wasn't like that, where did all this come from? No, my father was the perfect Gryffindor. But know that I know I'm the son of Severus Snape, it all makes sense. The hat was right. I should have been in Slytherin!" Harry concluded.

He reached for a piece of candy, and crunched it up.

The lemon drops reminded him of his boyhood, they comforted him.

"Harry, you've managed to insult yourself, your father, and one of our founders all in one rant. There is nothing wrong with being a member of Slytherin house. Moreover there is no shame in being the son of Severus Snape. I'm very proud of my ward. I think that he is the bravest man in the Wizarding World. And you remain the son of James Potter as well, and a Gryffindor, just like he was." Dumbledore told Harry.

Harry sat down again.

"How? He asked

"Let me begin at the beginning. You're nearly an adult now, Harry, so you must know that love is a beautiful and pure thing, but it rarely finds you at the best time with the best person. You are also old enough, and experienced enough, to know that sex complicates everything. Try to think of your parents, for as Severus observed, they are all three your parents, as people, young people your own age, living in an uncertain time, with war and death all around them. Much like you and your friends are, now. Lily and Severus grew up together, and they were always the best of friends. But she loved your father very much as well. It's possible to have more than one person be the love of your life." Dumbledore explained.

"But how could such a thing happen?" Harry demanded.

"In the usual way, Harry, I think." Dumbledore replied, diplomatically.

Harry didn't think that was funny, so the Headmaster pressed on.

"The point is, you were still a child of love, Harry, loved by three people who wanted only the best for you from the first they knew that you were going to be born. Surely you can't blame your 

mother and father for taking a little consolation in one another in such troubled times? James didn't. He wasn't happy when he found out that Lily was carrying Severus' child, but he found it in his heart to forgive her, and to understand. As for Severus, he gave up the woman he loved, who was carrying his child, into the hands of a man who had, until recently, been one of his worst enemies, because he feared for your life and Lily's if Voldemort was to discover his treachery, and because he knew that he was in no position or condition to be a parent. Don't think too badly of your father. He did what he thought best. He had a horrible upbringing, much worse than yours, and he wanted you to have something better."

"I didn't." Harry snorted.

"What's more, it didn't sound like old Snape thought the Dursleys would be any better for me. I'd rather have taken me chances on Snape." Harry insisted.

"Harry, do you really think Voldemort would have let you or your father live if he was raising the son he had with an enemy agent?" Dumbledore asked.

"No. But the wicked old screw didn't go out of his way looking after me, did he?" Harry added.

"On the contrary, I think he counted down the days for ten years. Severus never forgot you, Harry. If you were ever given an extra privilege when you were a child, you have Severus to thank for it. He must have threatened to bring charges against the Dursleys in our courts a dozen times. There were times when Hagrid and I had to go to your Aunt and Uncle's house while you were at school and drag him out of the kitchen, because he was there fighting with your Aunt Petunia about how she should raise you. If you look back, you'll see that everything Severus has done over the years that have angered you were the acts of a loving father who was worried about his son. I know this is very hard for you, but again Harry, you must keep this truth secret, until we have taken care of Tom Riddle once and for all, or the sacrifices all three of your parents made on your behalf will come to nothing. After that, you may do what you choose, but I would ask you to be generous with your family. In some ways they all three gave their lives for yours."

Harry didn't know what to say. He wasn't so sure he believed that happy family version of events he was getting from Dumbledore, but he knew who he could talk to in order to get the straight dope.

The old man.

Snape.

It was all too much.

"I won't tell anyone else, but can I tell Snape that I know?" Harry asked.

"It would be cruel of me, Harry, to ask you not to. Perhaps Severus was right. Whatever you think of him, however you may feel, I think it will do you good to know that you have two fathers who love you, Harry, and one of them is still very much alive. And he very well may need you as much as you need him." Dumbledore concluded.

Wise and mysterious as usual.

Harry just sort of wandered out of the headmaster's office, aimlessly, and in a daze.

He had never really thought of his parents as being young people, only a few years older than he was, living in a time of war, the way he was.

Could they have been infused with the same feeling that he had been? The feeling that you might as well get high and screw and throw caution to the wind, because no matter what you were told, you knew tomorrow wasn't coming?

Harry was on his way to Snape's office when the enormity of the whole thing hit him like an empty firewhiskey bottle to the back of the head.

_I'm not an orphan._

He thought it twice, just to make sure it was true.

All his life had had been without a mother and a father; until he came to Hogwarts he had been without family at all; the Dursleys, who raised him out of some kind of obligation to British Decency certainly didn't count.

And Sirius was his godfather and Dumbledore was like a grandfather, and the rest of the teachers and his friends something like a family.

But never so much as a grandmother, like Neville, let alone a Mom and Dad.

Until now.

_I am not an orphan. I was never an orphan. So I don't particularly like me father. He's an improvement over the goddamn Dursleys. Dumbledore must have known I was in the office. He doesn't do anything by accident. He must be trying to teach me something. Got to_ _think about the end of Star Wars_._ It was hard for Luke to accept that Vader was his father. But when he did, he saved them both from the Dark Side. _

Even though it all sort of made sense to Harry, he didn't know how to feel.

On one hand he couldn't believe he really had a father, a real living father, but on the other he knew he had still lost his father, the man who accepted him as his child.

And his father was Snape.

Snape, Snape, Snape.

Snape was his father.

His flesh and blood father.

He had to keep thinking it over and over again in his mind so that he remembered it was true, all the way down to the dungeons, where the old man lurked like a great greasy bat.

Harry pounded on the door, and Snape answered in his greying y-fronts, with a fag dangling from his lips.

_Oh, that's my old man for sure. Who else?_

Harry wondered if Hermione was in there with him.

"Were you expecting somebody else?" Harry asked.

"Very funny, Potter. What do you fucking want?" Snape replied.

He looked very tired, and emotionally drained, like he really, really, really needed a fucking drink.

Harry suddenly wondered if Snape didn't say "Potter" through clenched teeth because he thought he should be saying "Snape"

"I can see by the look on your face that you have either taken off your glasses and had a good look in the mirror, or you were snooping around with James' Invisibility Cloak, again."

"I had it figured out before that. I was in Dumbledore's office to ask him if you were really my -"

Before Harry finished what he was saying, Snape clapped his hand over his mouth.

"Schtum!" he whispered, loudly, and after looking both ways, he pulled Harry into his quarters.

"You can't go blabbing that all over the fucking school! Are you out of your mind? We can talk in here. The rooms are Protected." Snape snapped, as he pulled on one of his pairs of black Levis that he'd slung onto the floor.

"Is Hermione here?"

"How do you know about me and Hermione? Oh. That's right. You were in the office, spying. Chip off the old block, I suppose." Snape replied wryly.

"Actually, last year I'd snuck into your lab to steal some things to make some dope, and you accidentally locked me in the office when you locked her in the office and I kind of saw you shagging her on the desk. I mean, when I saw that was what the two of you were going to do, I turned me head and put me fingers in me ears."

Snape looked ill.

"I think I'm going to vomit." He said, and fell into a chair.

Harry sat down in the other chair, and threw another log onto the fire.

"It's pretty nasty. So you're really my father, then, Professor Snape?"

A funny thing happened. The Potions master began to laugh.

And seeing Snape laugh was a rare thing.

His laugh, Harry noted, was disturbingly familiar.

"Figured it out, did you, Potter? I'm not surprised. I would have."

"It explains a lot of things. Quite a lot of things."

"I'm sure it does. Welcome to the family, so sorry about the gene pool. Smoke?"

Harry couldn't believe it.

Snape was actually letting him bum a ciggie.

It was true.

Snape was his father.

"Yes, please!"

Harry and Snape lit up, and quietly smoked for awhile.

"Why the fuck doesn't anybody tell me these things? Not that we ever got on all that well, but if somebody told me, well, old Snape, he's your father, I might have made an effort." Harry wailed.

"Don't look at me. I wanted to tell you. It was all Albus' idea. I wanted to come and get you from the Dursleys as soon as Voldemort was gone the first time. But Albus wouldn't have it. At the Dursleys you were protected, he said. Yes. Protected from knowing who you really were, and protected from having anything like a loving family. That cow of an aunt of yours! You know, Petunia never liked me, even when I was a boy. Telling me I didn't know anything about raising children, and calling me a drunk and a drug addict and a murderer! I never killed anyone in my life. What did she think I did at the school? Herded cats? Keeping you in a room under the stairs. And that pompous fat oaf of a Muggle son-of-a-bitch she married! The only time I ever felt sorry for Petunia Evans in my life was when I found out she had a son and I realised she'd had to submit herself to that fat fuck! I don't like your kind in my house! My kind, he said! It's a miracle that neither you nor your cousin Dudley grew up to be cry-baby mama's boy basket cases, with those awful soulless suburban yuppie pigs rising you!" Snape seethed.

Harry had to laugh.

Snape's description of the Dursleys was dead on.

"So, what's wrong with the gene pool? Who am I? Could I have helped getting so fucked up?" Harry asked

"Most likely, no. Your mother's influence seems to have purged you of much of the insanity I brought to the table but, if you believe a man's fate is written in his genes, you and I were both fucked from the start. My parents, your grandparents, unfortunately for you, could have appeared on the cover of Who's Who in Mental Dysfunction. I know your childhood was fairly rotten, which is ironic, I suppose, but mine was like Dickens by way of Burroughs. With a little Lovecraft thrown in for splash and dash. Do you know who I'm talking about, Potter?"

Harry nodded.

"On the positive side, the Princes are a very old family, our bloodline dates all the way back to the time when Hogwarts was founded. We've never had a lot of money, but one thing the Princes have in spades is brains, and that's what's got us respect in the Wizarding World, without our being bullshit aristocrats or wealthy bourgeois pigs. Like the Blacks. They've all got money, which you can make if you have brains, but most of them are quite thick. Your godfather is the smartest Black I ever met. His cousin Bellatrix is a mental midget. Evil and stupid both. But, I digress. The bad news is that you came from a rather degenerate branch of the Prince family tree. It started with my great-grandmother. She was a Lovegood, and nutty as a fucking fruitcake, like all of them are. My grandfather was alright, just a little moody and temperamental, but my mother, Eileen Prince, turned out to be just as loony as her grandmother. Loonier. The genetic cocktail that made her proved to be quite unpleasant. Of course, her drinking only made things worse. When she was sober she could keep it together, but Mum was never sober, so when I was growing up she was completely insane. And a nymphomaniac. Runs in the Prince family. Lots of Sex Magi, plenty of divorces."

Snape sort of laughed at his own joke.

Harry chortled politely.

"Mum lavished me with love and attention and hate and derision and I never knew which I was in for. According to my father, Tobias the Sailor, the big, stupid Muggle Scotsman with a hair-trigger temper who was the only one of a cast of thousands to take the bait, she'd always been like that, with him as well. At least the Dursleys fed you properly and gave you clean clothes to wear, and a nice place to live. My parents were both too drunk and too crazy to give a fiddler's fuck about me. Although, I must say that when he was sober the old man was kind to me. Otherwise he was drunk and screaming and he was beating me and by mother up and she was cursing and hexing him and beating him back. And both of them hexed and cursed and beat up on me. At least, unlike my mother, the old man was consistent. I knew well enough to stay away from him when he was drunk, and only to come around when he was reasonably sober. You never knew with her. She'd be teaching me how to make up a potion, all very nice and motherly and I could ask the wrong question at the wrong time and all of the sudden she'd start screaming and throwing hexes at me and beating on me."

"How could you live like that?" Harry asked.

He was genuinely enthralled, and soaking up all this information like a sponge.

"I didn't know any better. You can get used to anything if you have to. But it was quite a circus, Potter. My mother never worked, and my father was always losing his jobs, and we were on the dole, and they never moved us out of that filthy rat-trap in that sleazy degenerate neighbourhood full of whores and junkies and criminals and derelicts with the dirty river running past the windows. We couldn't keep a decent place, what with my parents being drunk and crazy all of the time, and mother bringing all her lovers around, and my father running around with this bird and that one. I never went to school before I came to Hogwarts; I was the only one responsible enough to get a job. I spent all the time I could outside, away from them, watching the river roll by. When the Mersey was at low tide, I used to go down and pick things out of the mud. Anything I could eat, use, or sell. I also used to deliver Daily Prophets. I taught myself to read and write with those. I was only sure to get one meal a day, the one I got at my friend Lily Evans' house. After I came to Hogwarts, I didn't go back to live at home for ten years. I was malnourished and starving when I came here, and I had no books, no trunk, not even a wand or a change of robes. I had a jumper, a pair of Levis, a black tee shirt and one pair of y-fronts besides my robes, which were hand-me down rags. My shoes, which were trainers, were all stuck together with tape."

"Is that way they took you into care?" Harry asked.

"No. My parents beat me so badly with an extension cord over my first Christmas holiday that I had to break the rules and apparate to Hogwarts so I wouldn't bleed to death on the floor of our hovel. I still have scars all over my back to this day. As you can imagine, the Ministry said my parents were unfit and took me away from them. I didn't even tell the caseworker the half of it. Because when those two lunatics weren't fighting, they were fucking. I had to knock and announce myself every time I wanted to go from room to room. At least the old man cared enough to yell 'Dinna come in here, lad. That crazy witch has got her hooks in me again!' Albus agreed to take responsibility for me, I was his ward. I stayed here, at Hogwarts, in the summer most of the time. Sometimes the Evanses took me in. For holidays. For a few weeks in the Summer. That's all the family I ever had." Snape told him.

"Oh my God, Snape! Well, what happened to them? Your Mum and Dad?"

"Not much, really. I used to sneak to go see them, even though I wasn't supposed to. I started to miss them after a couple years. They were alright, in small doses. They are me parents, after all. 

One day, the year after you were born, I got a call from the old man in St. Mungo's. He was there and so was my mother. She stabbed him in the chest during a drunken fight and then hung herself when she thought he was dead. I suppose, in some sick, mad, thoroughly unpleasant way, they do love one another, after all. He wanted to sober up and so did my mother. They've been sober now almost as long as I have. Now that they're sober, they've moved in with my grandfather, Severus Prince. Not that it's a manor house, or anything, just a draughty old Victorian house in Liverpool. Spinner's End was the name of a long since bulldozed filthy bombed-out slum of Liverpool, right on the dirtiest part of the Mersey. Such is where your roots lie. Stuck fast in black Merseyside mire. The old man's got a job, he works in the warehouse district in town, by the docks, he's some kind of foreman now. My mother is still mad, but she can cope much better now that she's sober. She has a shop in the city as well, and she reads cards and tealeaves and all that sort of thing for Muggles, and sells potions and supplies to witches and wizards. We send owls to each other, frequently, and visit, and I have a flat in the city. That's where I go for my holiday, if I leave here."

"So you just…forgave them?" Harry asked, incredulously.

"Well, they forgave me. What could I say, Potter? I was terribly angry with them. All my life. But no matter what kind of shape I was in or what kind of horrible shit I had done, they never turned me away from their door. They didn't care I was a Death Eater and a junkie and gone to bad and ruin. They hid me from the Aurors and the Muggle coppers, and put me back together when I dragged myself to their doorstep in pieces, and never asked me twice about it. Because they were me parents and I was their son, and the rest of it wasn't fucking important. We were family, that's all we knew. And you're family, too."

"And that's it?" Harry asked.

"Yeah. That's it, Harry. What more do you want it to be?" Snape retorted.

Harry almost fell out of his chair.

"Snape, you called me Harry!" he exclaimed.

"I can call you what I like, I'm your father, aren't it? I named you, you know. I wanted you to have a normal name that nobody could make fun of."

Snape looked exceedingly distressed and began chain-smoking.

"Fuck it. I'll say it. I'll say it once. But don't expect me to go saying it to you every day. That's not my way, Potter. I'm not a sentimental man. But you might as well hear it once. I loved your mother. All my life. I still do, even though Lily's dead. She's not dead to me. And I loved you even before you were born. I love you now. I can't help it, can I? You're me son."

Harry didn't know what to say.

He kept staring at Snape and Snape just looked right back at him, both of them smoking, furiously, neither batting an eye.

Harry was aware that families like the one that produced Snape existed, but he'd never met somebody what had actually come from one. Nobody but his father. Snape. Snape, the wicked old screw. Not his first choice for a Dad. Not his last. Not even in the running. But you don't get to pick your family.

And to have a father who really seemed to give a shit about him, and a family, and a past and a history after a lifetime as a mysterious orphan shuttled between semi-mythological hero and unwanted charity cased under the stairs, well, beggars can't be choosers, can they?

"Did I mention that, now that you know, you don't ever have to set foot in the Dursleys' house, ever again?" Snape added.

That was the icing on the cake.

"Awww, fuck! Beggars can't be choosers, can they? What do I have to say about it, anyway, Snape? If you're me Dad, you're me Dad, and that's the end of it, innit? So you've been a real prick to me for most of me life? I suppose most fathers are. What the fuck, count me in. I'm family, too. I ah, I want to make amends, too." Harry said, at last.

Rather than cry, or embrace, Harry fumbled in his pockets and Snape handed him another cigarette, and lit it for him.

"Look, I want to know how it happened. How I happened. Can you tell me that?"

Snape looked at him, archly.

"The usual way, Potter." He said.

"That's not what I meant!"

"I know. Well, your mother and I, since we were, I suppose in our third year or so, an, erm, physical aspect to our friendship."

Snape floundered. He didn't know how to say it.

"You and my mother were… friends with benefits?" Harry squawked, unable to say the cruder term he was thinking of in his mind.

"Yes."

"Did he know? My other Dad?"

"Of course he did. Lily wasn't the type to lie. James knew about us all along."

"WHAT?"

"Don't get sanctimonious with me, Potter! You and Miss Weasley aren't exactly exclusive. He used to think it was funny. James was very confident that Lily loved him and he didn't see me as a threat at all. I'm not going to lie to you and say he was happy when he found out Lily was pregnant with my child. He came into these rooms in a rage and we had one hell of a fight and beat the shit out of each other. We ended up in the Infirmary. Your mother thought it was hilarious."

Snape laughed a little.

"We had everything all figured out, the three of us. But, as you well know, Tom Riddle came in and spoiled that for all four of us." He finished.

Snape's tone changing to one of black anger.

"That bastard Riddle still has no idea that I am your father and he thinks I'm loyal to him, and I'm only grooming you for destruction. You're going to have to get a damn sight better at Occlumency, if you want to live long enough for us to kill him."

"Us?"

"Yes, Potter. Us. What Riddle doesn't know is that I've been grooming you fort destruction, awright. His. We're going to kill that fuck, in the most horrible way imaginable. We're going to avenge your mother, and avenge ourselves. What Luke- Lord Malfoy, I mean- told you is true. By the time I was 16 I saw right through Tom Riddle. I just wanted the money and the power. And I wanted to protect Lily. I was just waiting for the right moment to off him and take over. Hell, I wouldn't have minded if James moved right onto Voldemort's manor with us, after I offed the old bastard. I wasn't stupid enough to think money and power would turn Lily's head but I thought I could save her and be the king of the world as well. Now she's dead I could care less about the power, and the manor house, but I still want his fucking money. I know it sounds horrible. But I can't help it. I've been a fucking pauper all my life. I've signed awy 90 of my Skele-Gro royalties to a charity to ease me guilty conscience. Dammit I've earned Riddle's ill-gotten gains, through these many years of fucking suffering. And so have you. To the victors go the spoils, Potter. I want Voldemort's head on a pike and I want every red fucking cent of his I've paid for in my blood. We're entitled to it." Snape snarled.

"You really are a Slytherin." Harry replied.

"Fine, then, my bold Gryffindor. You take the glory. I'll have the cash."

"I didn't say that, now, Snape. There's no value in all that hypocritical gratitude every wanker in the Wizarding World will heap on me if I do manage to off Mouldy Auld Voldy. I wouldn't mind getting a lifetime of finacial security out of it. I'll take my half."

Snape had to laugh.

"Chip off the old block. Although, when I was your age I imagine I would have tried to find a way to get the money and keep Riddle alive and in my pocket just to be safe. You've got a lot of your mother in you, you really are the bold Gryffindor. But you're half Snape, no mistake. You've got the family temper. And great physical strength. I saw you crack that solid block of stone, right there. I've seen you in the Potions room at detention carrying a box with thirty cauldrons it in like it was nothing. And what about your little adventure in Knockturn Alley and the five fully grown wizards you knocked the shit out of? You're like me. Much stronger than you look. You got that from your grandfather. He's like an Ox."

"And you were telling Dumbledore he's lucky you wear contacts."

"I do have a pair of glasses. I wear them at night. I used to wear them whenever my eyes got tired but I dare not in case anyone would notice a resemblance. As you observed, Potter, the older you get, the more you start to look like me. I might as well put them on. No reason to squint at you when you already know."

Snape's glasses were rectangular rather than round, but the effect was still unsettling.

"Jesus Christ." Harry said, and he got another cigarette from Snape's packet.

"I'm sorry, Potter. It's a hell of a thing to find out who your father is when you're seventeen years old. And to find out he's Darth Vader."

"That's just what I said to Dumbledore."

They both laughed that time, and Harry realised Snape was right.

He swallowed a far more an insane laugh, thinking he should have known he and Snape were related when he saw what he saw in Snape's office when he was rogering the shit out of Hermione on the desk.

"So I'm the son of a hard nut from Liverpool who's the son of an even harder nut from Glasgow? It makes sense. I'm a real heartless fucking brute, sometimes." Harry confessed.

"I don't want you aspire to be like Tobias. Or like me. I'm a hard and bitter man with a cruel streak, because I've had a real piece of shit life and I've lost almost everything I've ever loved. But I'm not all bad. And you, you have a chance not to be bad at all. Look at me, I never laid a hand on a woman in anger and you know how infuriating Granger can be. Imagine she was your woman. And I know the students fear me. But I don't enjoy terrorising them. I think a lot of the teachers here are too easy on all of you. I think a lot of these wealthy parents are, as well. And the Muggle-borns, their parents don't know shit and can't be expected to. You know what the world is like. Witches and wizards have to be disciplined and prepared for anything. Coddling the students and spoiling them is not going to prepare them for anything. Life is quite a ballbreaker, it's my job to get all of you ready for that. And it hasn't been easy, especially looking after you."

"Me?"

"Don't give me that fucking innocent shit, Potter! An old junkie like me, you've nearly given me a million heart attacks and fucking strokes! You are a real chip off the old fucking block. You've got a mean temper and fists like meathooks. You're stubborn, and rebellious and clever and sneaky, and if you want to do something, you'll bend every rule to the breaking point and find a way to do it without anyone being any the wiser. You're not so fond of your life that you care too much about putting it in danger, when you think you know something and you know it's right. Not to mention you've been known to ignore your studies, sometimes completely." Snape added.

"It's all true, it's true." Harry admitted, laughing.

"I'll tell you one more thing you inherited from me. An obsessive, compulsive, addictive personality. You think you were wild? Wild? I did every drug Muggles invented, and every drug known to the Wizarding World. I started drinking when I was five or six, I lost my virginity when I was nine years old and I tried all my potions on myself. And when your mother began to go out with James, well I took whoever would come along, as long as they were female. Anyway, when word got around Hogwarts that Snape could have moonlighted in pornies, all of the sudden they were interested. None of them would be seen with Severus Snape in public, but after the lights went out, they beat a path to my bed. In hindsight, I can see it was all terribly demeaning, but so what? Like the old man always used to say, pussy is pussy, and a man's a fool who complains about how and why and where he's getting it. I can't say I regret it. Honestly, I'm surprised I was even physically capable. It's a good thing my mother is a nymphomaniac. You also know from the WAND meetings that by the time I was your age I was mainlining heroin mixed with Purple Doom, drinking four bottles of Scotch a day. I quite literally didn't know what planet I was on. And as for headstrong and rebellious, well, you got that from me, too. I even rebelled against the Dark Lord. I admit to having an outlaw streak a mile wide. Just like you." Professor Snape reminded him.

"Goddamed mercenary bints! It was them that did it to you, probably. Not my Mom, of course, but those goddamn bitches that just used you and treated you like dirt. You think you've got it over them, but in the end you're the one who's getting fucked. They don't want you for yourself, the girls. They just want to ride the Firebolt." Harry observed, sourly.

He was still smarting from his encounter with Cho.

"Harry, let me give you a piece of advice. Being a young man with an enormous cock is like being a girl with huge tits. If you're stupid and you let them, people will take advantage of you, use you, and then toss you away like an old shoe. Don't let them do it. Have some pride in yourself; start being choosy about who you want to share your gifts with. Do what the girls with big tits do when they wise up and become women. Be smart. Make them prove to you that they're worth it." Snape advised.

Harry couldn't help it.

He had to ask.

"Do I get that from you, too?"

"Not to be crude, Harry, but it depends on how much you've got."

"Thirteen and a half! And not skinny, neither!" Harry said, proudly.

"Right down to the millimetre." Snape replied, equally proud.

"But I'm the Boy Who Lived. Just between you an' me, I've had more arse than a toilet seat."

"Maybe, Harry, but when I was your age, it was the Seventies. And you know how witches are about a beast of a man." Snape reminded him.

"So, who in the family do I look like?" Harry asked.

"Luckily for you, you look more like Lily than you do like me. You've got my height, and my build, and your hair's the same colour as mine, but you look more like your mother and your grandmother than you do like me and the old man. We're a couple of ugly bastards. But in a Bon Scott sort of way, so the birds still love us. And if the birds still want you, who the fuck cares how ugly you are?"

Harry could see the logic in that; but he was still glad he looked like an Evans or a Prince rather than a Snape.

"So, what do we do now?"

"We'll have to keep the secret until we've killed Riddle. I'll be telling you more about the plan when you get closer to your part in it. For right now, if you need something besides your studies to keep your mind off of all of this tasteless drama, I'll give you a hint about how to solve Weasley's disgusting problem."

"You know about that?"

"I'm up most of the night, every night, wandering the halls. I know about everything that goes on in this place, sometimes unfortunately. I'll tell you this. I have not been back to the prefects' bathroom in quite some fucking time. Diabolical."

"It is grotty, isn't it?"

"Grotty? It's revolting! And sad. With all the women in the world, couldn't Mr. Weasley find anyone but Myrtle? I mean if I can get a woman, anybody should be able to. Couldn't you have fixed him up with someone? Anyone? Someone who was alive all the time?"

"No, no. Not Ron."

"I suppose not. Now, Myrtle was stricken by a basilisk. By his eyes. That gives Weasley a chance."

"Is that the only hint?"

"It'll keep you and Ron and Hermione out of our hair while we settle Tom Riddle."

"True. I can't believe me father and me best friend have a thing going. If you and Hermione ever got married, she'd be me fucking stepmother!"

"I know. Thank God you never slept with her, or we'd all have to move into a caravan in America and go on Jerry Springer." Snape observed.

"Now you had better go get some sleep. Come in tomorrow half and hour early. I'll need to step up your Occlumency lessons. And the day after that. And the day after that, until you're so good I can't see your thoughts."

"I will." Harry promised.

Snape got one of his cigarettes, and Harry's stomach growled.

"Treacher!" Snape called.

Harry was surprised to see a house elf in clothes apparate with a crack.

"Get Master and Harry Potter something to eat."

"Does Harry Potter know, now, Master?"

"Yes. But Treacher as to keep quiet about it."

"Certainly, Master. Treacher serves Master Snape. Treacher takes care of Master Snape since he was a little tiny baby. Master Snape frees Treacher but Treacher does not want to go. Now Treacher takes care of Master Snape and the Granger and now Harry Potter, too?" the house elf asked.

"If it's okay with Dobby."

Dobby apparated with another loud crack.

"Treacher and Dobby is friends. Dobby knows all about the Snape is Harry Potter's father but Dobby is quiet too. We stay quiet."

"Ah, then I suppose its alright." Harry replied

"Good. Dobby could use some help."

Then another loud crack and there was Kreacher, beating himself about the head with an ashtray.

"Oh Master Potter! Kreacher did not know that Master Potter was a Prince! To think that Kreacher has been rude with a Prince! Kreacher will never forgive himself. He is no longer worthy to serve Master Black or young Master Prince! Krecaher is worthy only of...death!"

"Kreacher, stop! You're bleeding!" Harry exclaimed.

"Stop this, brother! Harry Potter does not want you to die! And what would Master Black do without his Kreacher?" Treacher cried.

He and Dobby began trying to wrest the ashtray from Kreacher.

"No! No. Treacher will leave his brother alone! Kreacher must punish himself! His life is no longer worth living."

Snape levelled his wand at the ashtray and vaporised it with a spell Harry didn't know.

"Enough of this bullshit! If I don't get something to eat soon, you're all going to be in big fucking trouble!" he roared.

Cowering, Kreacher and Dobby disapparated with a crack.

"Thanks you, Master Snape." Treacher said.

"You're welcome, Treacher. Make sure you crazy brother goes home to Sirius. You know how the Black's are. He wouldn't be able to find his shoes or put the kettle on without his house elf. And go check on Granger. See if she wants anything."

Treacher disapparated and he and Dobby soon apparated with armfuls of snacks.

"Don't look at me like that, Potter. So I'm a glutton. A man's got to have some vices." Snape said.

"I've got no problem with gluttony. It's one of my favourite Deadly Sins." Harry said.

"In our family they're more like the seven cardinal virtues."

It had been a long day, after all, and Harry decided that as long as he was there, he might as well have something to eat.

With the old man.

Wicked old screw.


	9. Family, Finals and a Fiendish Plot

**Chapter Nine: Family, Finals, and a Fiendish Plot**

_Author's Note: It's rather a long chapter, sorry about that, but the next chapter required a bit of set-up. It's not boring, though, and I might just be gearing up for some lemons in future chapters, so hang on if you've heard enough about dope and Led Zeppelin and innuendo and you want the details when something smutty is going on. Glossary at the end for vocabulary confused. ;)_

The first thing Harry thought of when he woke up the next morning was that he was Severus Snape's son.

It was his first morning waking up and having Snape for a father.

The very thought was staggering.

The feeling of unease about being Snape's unholy progeny got together with the paranoid prodding of the Everlasting Mr. Jones and his usual misery at having to rise early, and knocked poor Harry for six.

Like the burning itch that had assaulted him at the top of his withdrawal; he felt inside out and raw like all of his skin and been scrubbed away with steel-wool wire brushes.

On this morning, and on every other morning of his life, when he woke up, it would be, "Good morning Harry Potter, the Snape is your father."

Well, he supposed that, technically, every morning in his life he had awakened and had Snape for a father, he just didn't know it.

He hid under the covers until the worst of the feeling of nausea of the soul began to fade.

The only thing that really panicked him was that things were going to substantially change.

He didn't know if he could handle Snape going all sit-com Dad on him.

"Harry Potter? Wake up, Harry Potter. I know the world is nasty and cold and full of things that Harry Potter does not like, but Treacher has brought you food. Dobby and Kreacher have told him what Harry Potter likes to eat. Come on out. The morning won't hurt you. Treacher promises."

The house elf's voice was very quiet and soothing, and the food smelled very good.

Harry pulled the covers down.

Treacher, in his tee shirt and mismatched striped socks, gave him a very sympathetic look.

"Breakfast for the Snape's Harry Potter. Coffee and bacon egg cheese on a muffin."

The house elf even had an ashtray at the ready.

"You're very good at this." He told Treacher.

"Treacher is used to it."

Harry sat up, had his breakfast and watched the floor show, which began when a wild-eyed Snape emerged from his bedroom and commenced stumbling about his rooms in a half-open ratty plaid dressing gown in Slytherin colours, drinking from a gigantic mug of coffee, and mumbling insults and obscenities to no one in particular as Treacher followed him about with a plate of food, entreating him to eat something.

"Oh, there you are, Potter. Ate yourself into a stupor and didn't make it to bed, I see. Well, hurry up and finish your breakfast; I do have class this morning and we need to get to work." Snape told him.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief.

"Yes, Professor."

"Don't call me professor outside the classroom! I'm your bloody father, for fuck's sake!"

"Okay, erm, Snape."

"That's better, Potter. God, I hate mornings. How I loathe life. Treacher! Bring back that plate of food, I'm fucking starving!"

"So, what do we do now?" Harry asked.

Snape sat down beside him and started in on his breakfast.

"Just what we were doing before, Potter. Except know you know exactly why I bother. Don't look so worried. I told you before you don't have to worry, anymore. I'm not going to let him kill you. Or me, for that matter."

Snape borrowed one of Harry's cigarettes.

"Is is a good plan, Snape?"

"It's a fucking good plan. That ugly snake-faced old tosser won't even see it coming."

Snape laughed a little, thinking about it.

_That's my father_. Harry thought.

Maybe it wasn't going to be quite so bad.

* * *

Much to his relief, Snape didn't act any differently to him than he had before, and Harry, in turn didn't act any differently either.

Now that he thought about it, Snape had been acting pretty fatherly towards him of late, anyway.

Harry decided he would rather not think about such things, and Snape seemed, to Harry's great relief, to feel the same way. They did begin to get on a little better, and Harry wasn't quite so afraid to talk to the wicked old screw about the things he was supposed to, as Snape's sponsoree.

Other than that, it was pretty much business as usual with him and Snape. They weren't exactly at "Dad" and "Son" yet, but they were doing as well as a couple of broken-down, bitter old junkies could be expected to do.

Why, Snape was even allowing Harry to bum fags from him all the time, and he passed on his issues of _Bad Witch_ to Harry after he'd read them.

Real father-son stuff.

Harry was impressed.

The thing that really made it all bearable was telly.

The old man loved telly.

He had one in every room.

Harry was fond of the telly, himself, especially Snape's telly.

He had it rigged so that you could call up whatever program you felt like watching, by punching the letters in on the remote.

He was getting to see shows he hadn't even thought about for years.

Programmes he never got to watch even when they were on because Uncle Vernon didn't like them or because Dudley was watching some crap video he liked or because Aunt Petunia was watching some cooking show and what he wanted was always last.

Couldn't even get a half hour of peace in front of the telly to watch one bleeding program a night. But now he had Snape's magic telly, and the old man and he seemed to have similar taste in programmes, so he could watch his shows as much as he liked.

After his evening tutoring sessions, which Harry had twice a week, he and Snape watched telly and had something to eat. Hermione often showed up, as well, and it was actually something Harry began to look forward to; it gave him something to do in the evening after homework and before bed besides think about how high he'd be getting if he was still getting high.

Also, the old man had the best record collection in the known universe. Well, if you liked blues and rock and that sort of thing. He had records that Harry had spent half his life dreaming about, and his stereo was so good that when you listened to Cream, you could hear Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce cursing at each other between songs.

Neither Snape nor Harry said much about it.

The whole family bit.

Snape came out with "You seem to be coping with all this fairly well, Potter." one evening while they watched _Red Dwarf._

"So you're me Dad? So what. These things happen." Harry replied.

Snape seemed to think that was reasonable enough.

* * *

Often times as they all sat in front of the tube, they were each of them trying to think of an appropriate time and manner in which to tell Hermione the truth, but dysfunctional family reunions were the least of what was on Hermione Granger's mind.

She had problems.

Big ones.

While Ron was trying to figure out how to make his girlfriend permanently real, and Harry and Snape were bonding over English Ovals, telly, girlie mags, classic rock, and "did you, well I did this" war stories, Hermione had got herself into a whole fucking shitload of trouble.

Even before Snape warned her off him, Hermione never liked Professor Crich. Sure, he was a handsome man, but there was something about him that she found subversive and creepy. However, after years of doing their faithful but fruitless obsequies at the church of Severus Snape, Sex God, there was a rash of apostasy to the First Church of Crich. Rumour had it he was giving them everything they weren't getting from Snape. Apparently, despite school rules, Crich was ravaging the nubile 4th, 5th 6th and 7th years girls who willingly threw themselves into his path like, well, like a wolf in a flock of sheep.

For some reason, however, even though he was quite literally up to his nose in it, he was particularly fixated on Hermione.

Hermione could not have been less interested if every inch of his body was covered in boils.

Crich tried flattery, which she ignored.

He tried luring her to his office, which she subverted.

He even tried a few spells which she already knew the defences to.

It worried Hermione when the professor of Defence against the Dark Arts started using spells to try and subvert her will. But she was confident she could handle it.

And then, she was walking in one of the Hogwarts corridors, late after a night of reaserach in the library when Professor Crich was coming the other way.

"You're up late tonight, Miss Granger. Trying to get back to Gryffindor Tower before anyone discovers your Head Girl bed hasn't been slept in?" he asked, pleasantly.

Hermione didn't even blink. It was going to take more than that to rattle General Granger.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Professor."

Crich smiled a wolfish grin, his blue eyes flashing, ferally.

He laughed.

"Hermione, I am both a werewolf and an auror. Do you think I don't know the things that go on in this place at night? All the little secrets everyone has. Except yours is a big secret. Even though you two have the Headmaster's blessing, what would the whole school say if they knew about you and Professor Snape? Indeed, would Dumbledore be able to keep him on as a teacher, in the resulting scandal? That would be terrible, wouldn't it, if you and Severus had to being your married life in a flat over the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley. Think of how it might ruin your career, as well. A professor and a Death Eater, reputedly one still loyal to Lord Voldemort."

Hermione knew for sure that Snape was on the side of good, but she didn't give Crich the satisfaction of showing her anger.

And she had no idea what all this marriage business was about. Crich was just baiting her with maudlin sentiment, she decided.

The idea of a quick death curse crossed Hermione's mid as the paintings in the corridor studiously pretended to be otherwise occupied.

"Are you threatening me, Professor?"

"Why no, Hermione. Nor am I judging you. Who am I to stand in the way of love? Or whatever it is that you and Severus feel for one another. Perhaps its just that you Northerners really do like to stick together. Why I've been known to forget more serious things than that for a lady…if she's willing to be good to me."

"So it's sex you want, then, is it?' Hermione asked, crisply.

"Very businesslike, Miss Granger! I admire that. No begging, no tears. Yes, my dear, that's exactly what I want. But I'm in no hurry. I shall give you until after the Christmas holidays to think about it. Until the first Thursday of the term. If I don't see you in my rooms on that day…well, I'm afraid I won't be able to forget what I know. Don't look so glum, Miss Granger. You never know what might turn you on until you try. And you are going to try everything I say you will. I think you'll like it. You're just that kind of witch. Good night. Give my regards to Severus."

Before Hermione could reply, Professor Crich went on his way.

She walked very calmly away from the werewolf, and then, as soon as she was sure she was out of his sight she ran all the way to the dungeon at full tilt.

* * *

"Snape? Snape, open the door, open the fucking door come on lets fucking go you tosser open the goddamn fucking door hurry up for fuck's sake Snape you toerag…"

The Potions Master turned off his telly and looked at the door in disbelief.

"Granger?"

"No, it's Pete Townshend! Of course it's me! Open the goddamn door, you berk!"

In a moment, Snape knew it must be Crich.

Hermione had never seen anyone so angry as Snape was when he burst through the thick oak door, wand in hand, breaking off one of the hinges. He seemed to radiate fury, his body even looked as though it was puffed up with rage.

"Crich! CRICH!" he screamed.

That seemed to be all he could manage to say.

She realised that he was going to kill Crich, and that she couldn't let that happen. He'd go to Azkaban, at the very least, and leave her and Harry bereft, just when they both needed him most.

Years of training at Snape's hands had made her quick on the draw with a convincing lie.

"Crich what? For fuck's sake, Snape, you've got Professor Crich on the brain. There's something in my room. I'm not sure what it is, but it won't leave me alone, and it woke me from a deep sleep and scared the fuck out of me. I can't even go in my own room anymore. I tried the spells for a boggart and they're not working. I'm at me wit's end." Hermione lied smoothly.

Snape's demeanour changed, visibly.

"I take it you haven't learned any poltergeist charms in Professor Crich's class."

Hermione shook her head.

"Of course not. Why would seventh year students need to know that? You stay here. I'll get rid of it for you."

As soon as Snape left, Hermione called out for Dobby, who apparated promptly.

"Dobby, can you make yourself invisible?"

Dobby promptly disappeared.

"Of course Dobby can!"

"And would any spells or charms to ward off poltergeists hurt you?"

"No. Dobby is an elf, not a poltergeist or boggart."

"Good. I want you hurry up, go to my room and make Snape think you're a poltergeist and that he's gotten rid of you."

"Dobby can do that!" the house-elf agreed, and dis-apparated.

Hermione paced the floor for about a half hour until Snape returned, with Crookshanks at his heels.

"Bastard poltergeist! He was a tricky little fucker, but I got rid of him. It's not safe for you or your familiar in your room, tonight, not until some of those charms wear off."

Crookshanks jumped up on the sofa next to Hermione.

He knew damn well there was no poltergeist in his room, but he just curled up and went to sleep.

Snape sat down and put the telly back on.

Hermione said she was tired and that she was going to bed, and she left Snape there watching telly with her familiar.

She promised herself that she was going to take care of the Crich problem on her own, without telling Snape or Harry, and take care of it once and for all.

* * *

The next day, Hermione told Ginny all about her problem, and the two of them made a plan to deal with the Professor Crich problem.

Paranoia assailed Hermione; she was sure somebody had heard them talking.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Ginny? Can you keep schtum about it?"

"Yes to both. I hate than smarmy fucker. He doesn't smell right, and I mean that literally. I was born to GBH on the likes of that cunt." Ginny assured her.

"He'd better not push me. He thinks I'm Snape's little girl. I'm nobody's little girl. I'm a soldier, goddamnit!" Hermione fumed.

"A good one. We'll fix his little red wagon, you and I. He'll be still be looking down on the world, though. From the spike on the Hogwarts gates where we toss his head." Ginny assured her.

She started to laugh, and Hermione laughed with her.

"What are they so happy about?" Harry asked Ron, regarding Hermione and Ginny from the other side of the Gryffindor common room.

"They're probably going to fuck somebody up, good and proper." Ron observed.

Harry nodded.

"I'd hate to be him." He said.

Ron just looked at Harry.

Harry Potter's picture was in the dictionary next to the words "bad motherfucker". He was ten during his first confrontation with Lord Voldemort, and he won it. He took on an army of Dementors at 13, won the Triwizard Cup after taking on a dragon at 14, and formed a guerrilla army and joined the Order of the Phoenix at 15. And that was just his professional life.

He got his Order tattoo from the goblins, and didn't even break a sweat. Ron didn't care what you were high on; people had died from shock of the pain of getting goblin tattoos. Drunk or sober, he called You-Know-Who, "Tommy Boy" and "That fucker Riddle.", in public. On the one occasion that Ron accepted Harry's invitation to go pub crawling with him, Harry got into a fight with a much-older wizard who was a reputed Death Eater who embedded a steak knife in Harry's hand and pinned it to the bar.

Harry head-butted him, pulled the knife out of his hand, jammed it through the Death Eater's foot, and then proceeded to break his nose and administer the Cruciatus curse until the Death Eater passed out from the pain.

And all he said was "Shit, Ron, now I've got to go to the infirmary. That cocksucker wrecked me Friday night!"

And he didn't want to be however it was that Ginny and Hermione were mad at.

Hermione had also got her Order tattoo from the goblins; and she was a teetotaller.

So was Ginny.

She had an elaborate Goblin tattoo of the Gryffindor lion, and a Goblin tattoo of the Eye of Horus in the palm of her hand.

"He's doomed." Ron agreed.

* * *

Finals usually just snuck up on Harry, in his perennial alcoholic twilight. One minute he was getting off the Hogwarts express, the next he was getting knocked off the Firebolt with a Bludger, a few seconds later he was shagging ten different witches wearing the same costume before, during and around the Halloween party, and then before he knew it he'd wake up freezing when he passed out, completely naked in the courtyard or someplace else, and it was time to make up some bullshit to get a complementary C on his finals before returning to Muggle London to raise some hell over the holidays.

Those were the days. This year, however, he started hitting the books in the beginning of November.

Soon his tranquil telly and tea-times were a thing of the past.

Harry wanted to prove, for good and all, that he could make a go at success, good grades, Quidditch hero, Order member in good standing, the whole thing, all the while still letting his freak flag fly.

Without losing his sobriety.

He put in long, long, long hours in the library, and in his study group with Ron and Ginny, and in Snape's office.

It was just like the old days, in a way. He began to forget what his bed looked and felt like, but now Ginny was finding him passed out from overwork in the library, sprawled across his books.

In the end, of course, he fell back on the nicest of vices to even himself out.

The highlight of the whole matter was the rather interesting encounter he had with the Patil twins in some of the remoter stacks of the library.

But that was research, not merely debauchery.

Harry had discovered some Sex Magick books in the Forbidden stacks, which he gained access to by stealing the old man's password. It was about a week before the password changed, so Harry had the suspicion that Snape might have "accidentally" left the slip of parchment it was written on where Harry could find it.

So there wasn't a twins spell, per se. A good time was had by all, no harm done, and it certainly helped everybody involved work out some of their exam stress.

Harry used a copying spell on the arcane and forbidden texts he found, and relaxed in his free time practising some of the simpler rituals with Ginny, who did his translating for him.

Practise makes perfect.

The only final Harry was really worried, considering his extensive preparation about was DADA. The things that Crich had taught them that semester were in contravention of most of the things that Harry had ever learned about the subject both in and out of class. The half-werewolf ex-Auror was beyond unconventional; he was out to fucking lunch.

The only way to pass his final, Ginny and Harry and Ron decided, was just to give him the answers he wanted, even if they were blatantly not true.

On the subjects he had not covered in class, though, they weren't sure what to answer. Certainly not with what was in the book, or what they knew from previous classes or unfortunate experience.

Ron, however, came up with a bright idea while he and Harry and Ginny and Hermione were studying together.

"Snape!" he cried out, apropos of nothing.

Several of their fellow students at adjacent tables went into a panic, as if Ron had sighted the fearsome Potions master, in the flesh.

Harry, who was dozing a little, woke with a snort, and looked around.

He was beginning to get strung out on coffee, cigarettes, chocolate frogs and waking-up draughts. Even so, when he did get to sleep he could barely wake up. He propelled himself through his days not just with caffeine and nicotine, but with these great magical earplugs Fred and George came up with that played whatever music you liked into your ears whenever you wore them.

Harry wore them almost constantly; propelled through his crazy days by the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Doors and Zeppelin and through the long sleepless nights with Deep Purple and Judas Priest and Kiss and Motorhead.

Through the blasting music and the haze of overwork and over-stimulation, however, Harry heard Ron say "Snape."

He snapped to, as well.

"Snape? Where? Maybe he knows what the fuck we should do."

He reached into his robes, pulled out his bottle of Weasley Wake-Up Potion and found it empty.

Harry had bought a case from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, and he was going through a bottle or so a day.

It was empty, and as such Harry let his head fall into his books and gave ino the advancing nod.

"What about him?" Ginny asked.

"Well, Harry spends a lot of time with old Snape. He was a Death Eater. He knew Crich. And he seems to hate him as much as we do. Maybe he'd know how the crazy werewolf bastard thinks." Ron observed.

Harry had been halfway to dreamland, but Ron's remark jolted him rudely back to reality.

"What makes you think that Snape thinks like that motherfucker Crich!" Harry yelled, angrily.

Ron looked dumbfounded.

"By the Mother, Harry, calm down, mate! I think you're drinking too much of that stuff Fred and George brewed up. Either that or the vats of coffee you suck down. I didn't mean any harm." Ron told him.

"Maybe Ron just thinks that a bloke like Snape knows more about his enemies than he does about his friends. He is a crafty bastard." Ginny explained.

"Yeah. That's what I meant." Ron said.

He was sort of wondering what was making Harry fly to Snape's defence, but, then again, Snape did help him get sober and get his shit together, so he sort of understood.

"I'll ask him." Harry allowed.

"I can't process any more of this bullshit, tonight. I think we'd best turn in. Call it an night." Ginny suggested.

"Good idea. " Ron agreed.

He slammed his book shut.

"That's it. I'm absolutely fucked. I've got to get some sleep. I'm going to bed." Ron said.

Meaning he was going to go see Myrtle, and then go to bed and catch some ZZZZ's.

Hermione closed her book, too.

"Merlin's beard, it's almost three! That's enough of this shite! I've got to be up early tomorrow for some tests on the Doom antidote. I've got to get some sleep, too." she commented.

Meaning she was going to go crash with Snape and get out of bed the next morning when they were both damn good and ready.

Harry was asleep in his books.

"Can you manage him?" Hermione asked.

"I should hope so. Don't worry, I'll look after him." Ginny promised.

When Ron and Hermione were gone, Ginny looked both ways to make sure there was nobody around them, and then tweaked Harry hard behind his ear.

"Owwww!" he yelled, rudely awakened once more.

"Sharrup you toerag!" she hissed in his ear. "You almost gave yourself away."

"How did you-"

"Sharrup!"

"I wasn't going to say it? I was just going to ask you how did you know?"

Ginny shrugged.

"I've got a cat's sense of smell. You're scents are very similar. The nose knows." She replied.

"So, what about you? D'you want to knock off and have a nice kip?" Ginny asked.

"Can't. Got more work to do. I'll just pop back and get another bottle of Wake-Up." Harry told her.

She tried to get him to stay in Gryffindor tower and get some sleep, but Harry took a few slugs of Wake-Up, grabbed another packet of fags and an armful of parchments and he was off.

Ginny was beginning to worry about Harry. Lately, he didn't eat, he didn't sleep, he didn't even shag. All he did was guzzle coffee and Wake-Up and chain smoke and sit in the library with piles of books and papers all around him.

"Harry, you need to get some fucking rest. You're going to have some kind of collapse."

"No, no, not me. Can't rest. Got to study." Harry muttered into his papers.

Ginny decided she couldn't let him go anymore. She hated to rat Harry out, in all the years of all his drug abuse she hadn't ratted Harry out, but, then gain, maybe she hadn't done him any favours.

* * *

Snape was not asleep at three in the morning when Ginny Weasley came banging on his door, but he was surprised to see her at such a late hour.

He locked the bedroom door, as Hermione was in there, sleeping, and threw on his bathrobe as he went to the door

"Miss Weasley, what are you doing wandering the halls at this hour? Do you know how may house points I could take from you for this?"

"I'm sorry, Professor Snape. But it's about Harry. I don't know who else to tell. 'E won't sleep. 'E won't eat. 'E doesn't wash or change his robes. All 'e does is guzzle coffee and Weasley Wake-Up and chain smoke and study. 'E won't listen to me, or Ron, or Hermione. I'm afraid he's going to collapse. Seein' as 'ow you're his sponsor, I though I should tell you." Ginny explained.

Snape arched his eyebrow at her.

_She's figured it out too. Tom must be the only one who doesn't at least suspect._

"Wait here, Miss Weasley." Snape instructed her.

He shut the door, and came out in one of his concert tee shirts and pairs of black Levis, and handed her a piece of parchment.

"Take this hall pass, and go back to bed, immediately. I won't be taking any house points from Gryffindor this one time, because this is an emergency. From now on, though, if you think there are any student emergencies a professor should know about, don't wait until the middle of the night. Next time I will take ten points from Gryffindor. Now, I will take care of Mr. Potter. Where is he?"

"In the library."

* * *

The library was quiet except for the house elves who were putting books away and tidying up the stacks.

Harry was alone at a table, with books and papers and parchments spread all around him.

The candle that sat beside him was half-melted onto the table, and Harry was hunched over a piece of parchment, scribbling furiously.

He had been wearing his robes for three days, his hair was like a mop sticking up in all directions, his glasses askew and his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes framed with bags and dark circles.

Snape sat down opposite him.

"Good evening, Mr. Potter."

Harry popped out the musical earplugs, shook his head, and laid down his quill with quivering, ink-stained fingers.

"Sorry Snape. Can't talk. Got to study. He said.

He drummed his fingers on the desk and jiggled his leg. He was completely wired, totally strung out, and teetering on the brink of exhaustion.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Snape had been in rather a bad humour about the whole thing. He was going to take Harry to task over his behaviour, but one look at Harry let Snape know that he didn't know if it was three in the morning, two in the afternoon, Sunday, Tuesday, or the First of Never.

"Listen, Potter, why don't you knock off for tonight? Take the week-end off." he suggested.

"Can't?"

"Why?"

"Jesus, Snape, don't you think I'd like to take a shower, change my clothes, get a good night' sleep, roger my old lady? I haven't seen a bath or my bed for three days. Maybe more. I can't remember. I'm living on fags, coffee, chocolate frogs, Weasley Wake-Up Potion and fumes. I can't stop till after the DADA final. Crich is a madman. He has it in for me. I've got to know everything so he can't fuck me on this final and screw up my average so me whole life and everything I've worked for all semester goes down the khazi. You must have heard about the shit Professor Crich teaches that passes for Defence Against the Dark Arts."

"Of course I have! The man's a fucking fool! I could do better than that in me sleep!" Snape snapped.

"Well, we, I, we, erm, still have to pass his final. We know what top say about the shit he has taught us. But the shit he hasn't, erm, well, ah…"

Snape leaned through the cloud of blue smoke.

"Spit it out, Potter."

"I don't suppose that you would know what he would want us to say? Seeing as how you know more about him than I do."

"I was hoping you would come to ask me that question. Get your things and come to my office, Potter."

Harry was too tired to protest.

* * *

Snape warded the doors both of his rooms and his office and cast a Shielding Spell, so Harry knew that he was up to something.

He even looked both ways over his shoulder before muttering a password in Old Elvish to his desk drawer, , from which he drew a parchment.

"I know exactly what the seventh years should write for answers on their final exam for that rat bastard werewolf Crich. I have a copy of the answer key parchment right here."

Harry was used to the old man beating a sneaky fucker and a wicked old screw full of dirty tricks. But this, this was more Snape, than Snape.

"But Snape, that's fucking cheating! It's brilliant, but it's cheating." Harry protested.

"Cheating? I'm not the one who's cheating. Listen to this question. "What is your best defence against a werewolf?" Now, what's the real answer?"

"Wolfsbane in a solution of dragon's blood oil. For combat, a silver knife or sword. And a good Patronus."

"Correct. And what did Crich teach you?"

"To call the werewolf by his human name. But that wouldn't work unless you knew who he or she was when they were human. Still, that's his answer, right?"

"No. The correct answer is "Lie down and play dead." Snape read.

"You're fucking joking."

"No, Potter, I'm not. Crich has this answer parchment set up with ridiculous answers to all of the questions on the exam that not even an idiot like your friend Longbottom would give. You will all fail."

"Why the fuck would he do that?"

"To fuck you over, just as you suspected. Or to get his own back on me, because Granger is my apprentice. To get his own back at her and Miss Weasley for turning him down. To show you what happens to a wizard who stands in his way of taking what he wants. To get all the girls in the seventh year to blow him and get a passing grade. Or, perhaps just because he's a momentous fucking prick. Fucking Southerner." Snape suggested.

"Are you going to tell Dumbledore?"

"Are you my father or am I yours? All I want you to do is pass these answers on to your fellow students, and don't ask me any questions. Tell them you nicked the answer parchment. If it comes from me, they won't believe a word." Snape told him.

Harry secreted the document in the secret magical pocket in his robes where he used to keep his stash.

"I'll get on it right away. Filthy fucking werewolf bastard."

"It's three in the morning, Potter. What you ot to get on right away is a good night's sleep. It can wait until Monday. The DADA final isn't till Friday next. What were you planning on doing, staying up for nearly a fucking fortnight? You look awful and you smell worse. Have a bath, shag your woman, and go to bed."

"Is that fatherly advice?" Harry asked.

"No, it's a fatherly ultimatum. That's the easy way. The hard was is I can overpower you, take you to the infirmary, have Madame Pomfrey put you on a bedpan and put a Sleeping Spell over you to knock you out until Monday."

Harry knew that Snape wasn't kidding.

"I'll hide these in the Room of Requirement. And you could be right. I do need a rest."

"I'm going to have Treacher check on you in an hour or so. If you're not in your bed, it's off to the Infirmary and into a nice pair of Depends for you, Potter." Snape warned him.

"As soundly as I'm likely to sleep, I might need the Depends." Harry quipped.

They both laughed.

"Well, Snape, I do have a bed to catch, and more than likely there's a witch waiting for me in it. But, then again, you know what I mean, don't you, then?" Harry smirked.

"What's the point of going to bed, otherwise? You can sleep anywhere." Snape observed.

Harry went off to hide the parchments and, filled with sweet relief, he returned to Gryffindor Tower for a shower and a few hours of the deep and dreamless, after which he would give his Ginny the old dawn surprise.

Back in the dungeons, Snape summoned Treacher, gave him his instructions and then went back into his darkened bedroom.

Hermione was still there, awake and waiting for him.

"Did you slip Harry the answers? Is he going to knock off for awhile?"

"Yes. Move over. What, Granger, you mean you're just going to go back to sleep?"

"Yes. Eventually. I was having a lovely dream about home, and I don't want to miss the end."

"What kind of dream?"

"The kind of dream where I'm walking past John Lennon's old house, and he's holed up in there because he's afraid somebody's going to find out that he and George are both wizards and I have to hide them in me bedroom up the street."

"You middle-class birds from Woolton are all alike. Fucking sex fiends."

"Do you object, Severus?"

"Of course not. You can go back to your dirty little dreams after you go back to your dirty little bed…"

By the time Hermione flooed back to her Head Girl room around dawn, she was too tired to dream.

Much.

* * *

After a weekend of rest, relaxation and rogering, Harry got to work making copies of the parchments Snape had passed to him and distributed them to his fellow seventh years.

Most of them trusted Harry Potter implicitly, and began to work on committing the information to memory, but the Slytherins wouldn't touch his parchments with a ten foot pole.

Harry found himself thinking, "What would Snape do?", and came up with a solution.

At Tuesday lunch, he bumped into Draco Malfoy and caused both of them to spill their trays.

Draco immediately knew that the game was afoot, so he played along.

"Watch where you're fucking going, you li'le poofter bastard." He snarled.

"Sobriety getting you down, Potter? I'll chalk your rude and racialist comments up to the ravings of a half-mad, broken down old junkie." Malfoy rejoined.

As he bent over to pick up his tray, Harry leaned over to pick up his tray and pushed a scrap of paper into Malfoy's hand.

Draco tried to read it in an unobtrusive fashion at his table, but Goyle and Crabbe were breathing down his neck, as usual.

"Wot's it say, Greg?" Crabbe asked.

"It says Potter wants Draco to meet him in the loo. Wot, are you cheatin' on me an Pansy, you bitch? Just because Potter has a big dick! And you'll never bottom for me! " Goyle complained.

Draco put his head in his hands.

"First of all, Goyle, Draco Malfoy doesn't bottom for anybody. Second of all, you idiot, Potter doesn't want to make a date with me! This is business. Official keep our fathers' necks off the chopping block and our arses out of Azkaban so we're not bottom for half-giants business! So, both of you keep your traps shut about this. I'm warning you!"

Goyle looked relieved, and Crabbe nodded, vigorously.

"Don't look at me like that. Just talk amongst yourselves until I get back." Draco instructed them.

"I'll look after them, Draco." Pansy promised.

Draco stalked away.

"He doesn't love me anymore." Goyle fretted.

"Sure 'e does." Crabbe reassured him.

"Of course he loves you, Greg. Draco loves both of us. And I love both of you. Now, let's just act normal while he's gone." Pansy suggested.

She stuck her foot out and Neville Longbottom and his tray went arse over teacups.

"I saw'r that! Look what you, did, you lousy cunt!" Ron bawled at her.

Lavender Brown and Luna Lovegood both dropped their forks.

"Mr. Weasley! Such language!" Professor McGonagall gasped in shock.

"I'll take care of this, Minerva. Weasley, what do you think this is, the Quidditch locker room! If I ever hear that word coming out of your mouth directed at one of my girls, or at any other woman in this school, for that matter, I will hex your lips right off your face! Three days detention and twenty points from Gryffindor!" Snape seethed.

Lunch went on, as usual.

The last time Harry and Draco had met in that particular bathroom, Harry had used the wickedest spell of his enemy and almost killed his enemy, the son of his enemy.

Things had changed considerably in a year.

"Potter, where are you?" Draco demanded.

"Son of a bitch! Bugger! I'm stuck in this fucking hole! Pass me the soap."

Draco thought about looking into the stall to see if it was true what he heard about Potter having a giant cock, but in the end he just slipped the soap under the door.

"How can you lot do your business through these tiny little holes? C'mon, c'mon…owwwch...motherfucker…"

"I wouldn't know, Potter. I don't use glory holes, I'm not the washroom and bathhouse type." Draco bristled.

"Sorry, Malfoy. I am. I've fucked any number of bints I didn't know in bathroom stalls. Filthy ones, too." Harry confessed, glibly.

"Besides, they're for men to stick their dicks through, not horses." Draco quipped.

Harry came out of the stall, looking remarkably composed for someone in his previous predicament.

"What possessed you?" Draco asked him.

Harry threw some water on his face.

"I dunno. I knew it was a hole to stick yer cock in, so I stuck me cock in. Force of habit." Harry explained.

"I see what you mean. Look, if you've asked me here to find out if I'm holding, I'm not, and even if I was, I wouldn't sell you so much as a joint."

"No, no, nothing like that. It's about Crich's final. You might as well know. I got the parchments from your godfather. He wanted me to pass them around because most of our lot wouldn't trust the likes of him. But the Slytherins don't trust the likes of me. And Snape can't very well pass them around himself. Make some copies and make sure everybody in seventh year gets one and memorises the answers."

Draco took the parchment.

"I thought he might be behind this. But aren't you afraid I'll betray your trust, Potter?"

"No. Because if you fuck me, you've fucked all your classmates, and the head of your House, who's your Dad's old school chum. I won't have to lift a finger. You'll be absolutely fucked." Harry explained.

"That's some very Sltyherin thinking from a Gryffindor. But, then again, I suppose it's in your blood."

Malfoy was hoping to provoke Harry into revealing something about his hunch, but Harry just laughed at him.

"In my blood? Malfoy, don't tell me you believe all that bullshit of how Snape and me Mum had a thing and he's me father? What a load of bollocks! Both my parents were Gryffindors. And so am I." Harry replied.

He dried off his hands and face and walked over to the door.

"Good luck on your finals, Head Boy." Harry said, putting an accent on the word "head."

"Good luck on yours, Potter. Try not to get your cock stuck in anything else in the mean-time."

"Touche." Harry said, and left the bathroom.

Draco put the parchment inside his robes.

"You should be with us in Slytherin." He said to the door.

Malfoy made sure to spread it all over the school that Potter, fucking idiot that he was, stuck his dick through a glory hole, just to see what it was like, and couldn't get it back out again.

Snape had thought of at least ten snarky one-liners in the subject, but he didn't let on to the poor lad that he knew anything.

* * *

Hermione awoke bleary-eyed and exhausted on Friday morning. She had only slept three or four hours a night for the past three nights, trying to memorise all of fucking ridiculous Crich's fucking ridiculous answers.

She oozed out of bed, tripped into her washroom, and oozed out, with Crookshanks following anxiously on her heels.

She was just trying to get a comb through the massive bushy knot of her long-unwashed hair when the hearth went all green and quite suddenly there was Snape.

Despite it being morning, he was in a very good mood.

"Good morning, Hermione! How's me li'le genius on this fine and excellent morning? Cute as a button even when you haven't had a wash for days! Why don't you go and have a nice bath. I've mixed your bath oil for you, as Treacher told me you was running out. Chamomile, lavender, and sandalwood. Treacher's going to bring you breakfast in bed, and I've had him do your laundry. Where's the remote for that telly I gave you?"

"Snape?" Hermione asked.

"Yes?"

"No, no! Somebody's been mixing up some Polyjuice Potion! If you really are Snape, tell me something only Snape would know?"

"Certainly, Granger. You talk in your sleep, and you can't sleep at all if you don't have your little stuffed rabbit called Eric. And, when you get really hot you make this sort of noise like a…"

"That's enough, Sev! What's' gotten into you, this morning?"

"Nothing. Just in a good mood, is all. Take the flask. Go on, have a bath. I'll watch telly. _Keeping Up Apperance_s is on BBC2."

Hermione had the bathroom door shut and the water on when she realised why Snape was so happy.

It was Friday.

The day of Crich's final exam.

The day of Snape's revenge.

"Oh, so that's it. Good old Severus. He's never happy unless he's fucking someone. Literally or otherwise. Might as well make him doubly happy, then."

Hermione splashed a little more bath oil into the tub.

"Oops! Snape, I dropped the soap! Why don't you come in, and help us find it, then?"

* * *

Hermione was able to keep her poker face on during the DADA final, but Harry grinned like the Cheshire Cat the whole time.

Ron, who was sitting on her other side kept muttering things like "Take this, you toerag arsheole!" And "Bet you didn't think I'd know that one, fucker!"

Since he'd been playing in the band with Fred and George, he'd really been getting a filthy mouth.

Even if he was right about Pansy Parkinson being a lousy cunt.

Still, Hermione had to admit though, putting the screws to Crich was indeed sweet revenge. She wanted to laugh in his face, seeing the way that bastard walked up and down the aisles, smiling to himself, with his hands clasped behind his back, like he knew something they didn't.

As he passed Ginny, he lingered, and, low enough only that an animal's ears could pick it up, she growled at him, threateningly.

All the hairs on Crich's arms and the back of his neck stood up. He wasn't afraid of Snape's whelp or of his bitch, but he hurried past the Weasley girl.

A raging, bloodthirsty lioness was no match even for a werewolf, and he didn't think that the young animagus had any qualms about ripping him into bloody little shreds.

He decided to ward his doors after the final scores were posted, in the morning.

* * *

Harry had just got back from taking his final and was having a smoke in the Gryffindor smoking lounge when Treacher came with a note for him.

"A note from Professor Snape, Harry? Are you two finally beginning to get along?" Professor McGongall asked, hopefully.

Harry realised that if it was true that Dumbledore and McGonagall had secretly been married for eighty years, then she was likely to have been Snape's foster mother, and probably knew that he was Snape's son.

Everything was so fucking complicated, he was going to have to get a scorecard to organise his family relationships, for fuck's sake.

"Yes. I—"

"Albus told me all about it. You shouldn't smoke, Harry. Then again, I shouldn't either. And… neither should Colin Creevey! He's not old enough! Colin Creevey, what are you doing in the smoking lounge? Extinguish that cigarette at once…"

Harry opened up the note.

_Potter, _

_Not that you're the kind of man who takes pleasure in the misfortune of others, but _

_I'm taking Granger around to an old friend's house for a little celebratory dinner. If_

_you would like to come, we'll be flooing from my lab at seven. _

_Wear your tie, clean your glasses, and comb your hair.  
_

_ Snape_

Harry had no idea where they were going until he stepped out of the biggest hearth he had ever been in, into a great, high-ceilinged library that was the size of Hogwarts Great Hall and looked like something out of a Christopher Lee Dracula movie.

The walls were lined with portraits of people in different period dress that all looked rather like Draco, and there was a huge Slytherin crest carved in stone on the archway above the double doors way at the other end of the ornate room.

"Fuck me, we're at Malfoy Manor." Harry said to Hermione.

"So this is how the other half lives. Cor. Wicked." Hermione replied.

"Will you two stop gawking like rubes at the freak show!"

The two big double doors opened and Lucius Malfoy came in.

"Sev! Right on time! And here's our co-conspirators. Wobbly, let's have the ginger beers."

A contended-looking house elf handed each of them a glass of ginger beer which was made especially for Malfoy Manor by a Rastafarian witch in the hills around Kingston who was a master brewer.

"To the fall of Oliver Crich. May it be long and hard, and may he land on his sanctimonious arse."

They all drank heartily to Malfoy's toast.

"Come along, now. We've much to do this evening, and not much time. But first, let's eat. We've all been waiting for you." Malfoy said.

"We?" Harry asked.

Malfoy opened the doors to the dining room, and waiting inside was every member of the Order of the Phoenix.

"You don't fuck with Lucius Malfoy, either." Lord Malfoy observed to Harry.

"Welcome back, Harry!" Dumbledore announced.

Everybody stood up and cheered.

* * *

Harry had to hand it to Snape, he was a clever bastard.

And as for Malfoy, only a pureblood Slytherin could pull such a dirty trick on his former master.

Malfoy Manor was the least likely place anyone would expect the meeting of the Order of The Phoenix to be held.

Before the meeting, though, there was a large banquet at which everyone ate, drank and was merry.

Harry looked around the table.

"You know what, Sirius?" he said to his godfather, seated on his left.

"What's that, Harry?"

"This doesn't look like the usual tense meeting of war weary soldiers fighting a war they're not sure if they can win. This looks like a fucking victory party!"

Harry knew that Sirius was a little drunk, and he thought that maybe his lips would loosen a little.

"Snape! Harry's trying to pump me for information when I'm tipsy! He's been spending too much time with you!" Sirius yelled down the table.

"Good on you, Harry! Black, don't you tell him anything!"

"I won't! All in good time, Harry. All in good time. Right now, though, we have an immediate problem on out hands. One within the walls of Hogwarts."

"Oliver Crich?" Harry asked.

"Oliver Crich." Sirius answered.

* * *

After dinner, the Order assembled in the ballroom for their meeting, officiated, as usual, by Mad-Eye Moody.

"First, we'd all like to welcome Harry back, and congratulate him on his sobriety. It takes a strong man to come back from where he's been, make no mistake, and many of us have been their ourselves, the gods only know. However, the topic of tonight's meeting is the question of Oliver Crich. We know that he's still a Death Eater, and firmly in Voldemort's pocket. And we know we've taken a chance placing him at Hogwarts in order to feed him false information that he can feed to Voldemort. So far, the risk has been justified by the success of our little planting expedition. However, Albus, and Severus and Lord Malfoy, who is representing the concerns of the Ministry's Wizarding Child and Adolescent Welfare Department in his official capacity as Minister, have all expressed doubts about the continuation of this operation, because they feel that some of the students' safety may still be at risk. This is a serious allegation that we in the Order of the Phoenix cannot ignore and fob off as a ministerial duty that has nothing to do with us, especially since some of our members are Hogwarts students. Now, for you younger members of the order, who weren't alive when Crich made all the papers, Severus has a presentation to make regarding our concerns. I have to warn you, you may find what he's about to tell you both disgusting and disturbing. Remember, we thought long and hard about having a, well, excuse me, Remus, but a creature like Crich at Hogwarts, and, although you may not know it, he has been watched, he is being watched, and if there is any question regarding the safety of you and your fellow students, Crich will be removed. Immediately. Severus?"

Harry and Ron and Hermione exchanged looks.

"I'll bet he's a sex case. A filthy fucking sex case!" Ron whispered.

The other two nodded.

"What's that thing Snape's setting up?" Harry asked.

"It's a Thought Box. It's like a Penseive, except you can organise your thoughts and things like pictures and parchments into a presentation and play it back by pushing those buttons. Like making a movie." Hermione explained.

Snape began his presentation, projecting an image of a much younger Professor Crich, bound in magical chains and in a prison uniform, sitting before the High Court.

"I'm sure you all know that Crich was a Death Eater, but that is not the chief reason for which he was brought to trial. Crich was tried in Wizarding Court and in Muggle Court for the same offence."

Snape pushed a button and the projection changed to a London Times headline screaming "Werewolf of London Suspect Trial Begins"

"He was accused of the gruesome murders of ten Muggle girls between the ages of 15 and 18 in the years from 1975 to 1980. The girls were kidnapped, and extensively and sadistically sexually tortured for days before they were raped, slaughtered, raped again, and then partially cannibalised. The murders were so disgusting and gruesome that even the Muggle papers likened them to the work of a werewolf."

The next projection was horrifying; it was a picture of the body of one of the victims, or what was left of it, lying in a rubbish bin somewhere in London.

Snape quickly flashed away from it to another picture of Crich.

"He was acquitted in both courts due to an lack of concrete evidence. The murders, however, stopped during the trials while Crich was in jail, and no more were committed during the five years he served in Azkaban for the crime of being a Death Eater. Crich proved to be a model prisoner. After he was released, he became an auror, and had a rather distinguished career."

The next projections played like a movie, a series of clips about Crich and his record as an Auror.

"That is, until 1995 when someone leaked the sordid details of his kinky affair with a 15 year old Hogwarts student in Slytherin House. The young lady in question was also a hereditary werewolf. This part is what you students are likely to remember about Crich. There was a lurid and rather tacky series of articles in the Daily Prophet about how he hung her up in the chains in the torture chambers in the Hogwarts dungeons, and she liked it, and how she swung both ways and they had kinky threesomes with various other witches, and leather and whips and chains and rubber suits and ball gags ad nauseum. Or, perhaps your parents thought you were too young to read about that sort of thing."

"I read it. Didn't you, Harry?' Hermione asked.

"I wasn't reading the Prophet, then. I didn't want to think about Rita too much, at the time."

"I wondered why when I got the paper that half of it was missing." Ron mused.

Ron's mother spoke up.

"I didn't let my kids read that stuff! Fancy putting words like "Cock ring" and "Nipple clamp" and "Oral sex" in the Daily Prophet! I didn't look at the Tattler for six months, the gods only know what they were printing in that rag!" Molly protested.

She got a big laugh.

"Anything to sell papers, Molly. The long and short of it is that Crich got the sack from the Auror department, even though he married the young lady in question when she came of age. Supposedly, it's a real love match. More worrisome though, between 1995 and now, there have been three more murders in London, again of Muggle girls, that both the Muggle coppers and our Aurors think may have been committed by a team of copycat killers emulating the Werewolf Murderer."

Snape paused to let that sink in.

"The problem is that we have one of two situations. Either Oliver Crich is a rather kinky fellow married to a rather kinky girl and they both enjoy seeking the company of like-minded witches to privately practise their rather tiresome and old hat sort of pervertiness. In which case, whereas it is like putting a wolf among sheep having him in a school full of nubile young things who can get quite hot for teacher, it's essentially harmless since we can monitor his comings and goings and if everything is happening consensually amongst people over the age of consent, then pass the Vaseline and live and let live."

Snape got a nervous laugh out of the crowd.

"On the other hand, Crich may be a vile sexual sadist who with his like-minded mate enjoys not only preying on young girls, eating their flesh and drinking their blood, but also torturing, raping and mutilating them in a slow and agonising fashion so that this mangy hellspawn cur and his loathsome bitch can get their sick kicks. I, for one, believe it is the latter. I know Oliver Crich better than any of you, and I can tell you that Tom Riddle, himself, who is one of the most disgusting perverts this side of the works of DeSade thought that Crich could get a bit excessive. Lord Malfoy, who was the victim of Voldemort and saw, firsthand, more horrors than our minds can possibly comprehend, agrees with me. And I might add, so do his colleagues in the Child Welfare Department. We think that every girl in Hogwarts is in mortal danger, and that there is literally a bloodthirsty beast in their midst who may erupt at any second into a bloody homicidal rampage. Personally, I think Crich should be hung in chains for a few days to get some of the fight out of him, then dragged out into the courtyard, beaten within an inch of his life, disembowelled, castrated, drawn, quartered, and then beheaded. After someone shoves a red hot poker up his arse. Thank you. That concludes my presentation."

Harry and Ron both stood up and applauded, and so did Hermione.

"Well spoken, Severus."

"Thank you, Lucius."

"I'll do the bit with the poker!" Harry shouted.

"Harry, please!" Mr. Weasley cautioned.

"Ron, sit down." Mrs. Weasley said.

"You don't understand. He's been trying to get at Ginny." Ron explained.

"Chop his balls off!" Mrs. Weasley shouted.

"Burn him at the stake!" Bill Weasley added.

"Give him to me! I'll let the dragons have him!" Charlie added.

"No, let me have him. Let him be judged and punished by his own kind. We have ways of dealing with shape-shifters like Crich in our community." Remus Lupin suggested.

Whispers went through the crowd.

"I heard that Remus was affiliated with the Knights of Albion. Good on him, I say." Hermione commented.

"Who are the Knights of Albion?"

"Harry, don't you ever pay attention in History class? I'll bet you think Frodo plays seeker for the Cannons! The Knights of Albion are an ancient fraternal order of shape-shifting or hybrid beings. Animagi, were-wolves and other were-animals, both wizards and Muggles, fauns, satyrs, merpeople, centaurs, veelas, that sort of thing. They have committed themselves to working for peace and harmony between witches, wizards, Muggles and hybrid and shape-shifting beings. The higest ranking member is the Doge, then the Centurions, then the Knights, and there are thousands of members in the lowest order, the Yeomen, who have renounced their predatory or anti-human nature. They secretly work in-concert with Muggle and Wizarding society, and in the case of shape shifters, have learned to control their transformations and their behaviour in their animal form, just like animagi. You really should know about this, Harry. Their symbol is the Eye of Horus, commonly tattooed on the palm of the right hand." Hermione admonished him.

Meanwhile, Dumbledore stood up and called everyone to order.

"Thank you, Remus for offering us the Knights' services. This may not be the last time we need the Knights of Albion before the war is over. But, I remind you all, this isn't the Middle Ages. We have no proof of these accusations. Professor Crich has not threatened any student with any kind of physical harm. We are a society based on laws, and we cannot drag a man off to prison, or exact bloody vengeance on him based on rumours and unproved accusations."

Hermione looked around the room, with desperation in her eyes.

"Headmaster, we do not know who the student is, but my department's sources at Hogwarts indicate that a student had been threatened by Professor Crich." Lord Malfoy reported.

He looked at Hermione, and his usually cold and angry blue eyes bore an expression of understanding and sympathy.

He walked past a few chairs, and stood right behind Snape.

"Ron, Charlie, Mr. Weasley, please hold onto Harry." Hermione said.

"What?" Ron asked.

Hermione stood up.

"It's me. I'm the one. Professor Crich is blackmailing me. But he doesn't want money from me, he wants…certain physical favours, which I suspect might be of an extremely perverse and highly unpleasant nature." She confessed, coolly.

"WHAT? I'LL KILL HIM!" Harry yelled.

"Aye! An' I'll bury 'im out back! Nobody'll be the wiser!" Hagrid cried.

"For once in me life, I'm with Snape! Let's jam a red-hot poke up his arse!" Ron suggested.

"I would be prepared, as the Minister of the Child Welfare Department, and a pureblood aristocrat, to use my consierable influence to make any problems taht might result from a little old-fashioned justice go away." Lord Malfoy added.

Arthur, and Charlie and Bill had to hold onto Ron and Harry.

Snape looked as though he was about to explode, and Lord Malfoy put his hand on Snape's shoulder, firmly.

"Keep still, Severus. Don't betray yourself or Granger." He whispered.

"Order! Please, we must have order! If you boys can't control yourselves I'll have to eject you from the meeting. And thank you, I think, Lucius, but no. Hermione, why would Professor Crich is blackmail you?" Dumbledore asked.

"It's nothing serious. I'm not in league with him, I'm no traitor. It's a personal matter. You see, and ah, I've been ah…no, I'd best just be out with it. I've been carrying on with a man that it would be very embarrassing for both of us if it became public knowledge. We've nothing to be ashamed of, the, ah, carrying on began when I was of the age of consent, and we, ah, we have a very good, ah, and close friendship, erm, in addition to the, ah, other things. The point is, Crich has found us out and he's threatened to make a public spectacle of me and, and this man if I don't, ah, submit myself to his every desire before the holidays. That would be a matter of great embarrassment to both of us. He's a grown man, mind you, and we'd probably end up all over the papers."

Hermione felt like she was just going to die. She didn't dare even look in Snape's direction, and everyone was just staring at her. All the men in the Order were looking at each other as if to say, "Was it you? I didn't fuck her. Did you fuck her? Which one of us has been at her, then?"

She wanted to burst into tears and scream and run out of the room.

She felt just like Hester Prynne in _The Scarlet Letter_

Severus Snape, however, was no Dimmesdale.

"The jig's up, Luke. Look at them all, gawking at her!"

"Gryffindors. She might have lied. Right, you'd better go rescue her."

Snape strode across the room, angrily and wrapped his arms and the sleeves of his dress robes around Hermione, like he was shielding her from harm.

"Just what do all of you think you're staring at! What is this, 1842?"

"You, Snape?" Sirius Black asked.

People would have laughed, had Snape not looked so furious.

"Yes, me! Rotten, ugly, greasy, nasty, snarky, junkie old me! Go ahead, say it! All you fucking Northerners, especially you Scousers, you stick together. So what if we do? I'm not ashamed and you've all got your nerve making Miss Granger feel ashamed! I had no idea that the other members of this order had taken a vow of celibacy! I must not have received that memo! Hermione and I have done nothing wrong! I have the highest respect for her as a woman, a witch, a soldier, and a scholar. If we all live that long I do indeed intend to see to it she gets her appointment to the Master of Potions at the Merlin school, and I would consider it an honor if the most brilliant witch at Hogwarts would accept a post as my apprentice. If she'll have a manky old git like me, someday I may even make her my wife. So put your eyes back in your heads, and I hope I can count on you all to be discreet! Though I had no idea about this blackmail attempt, Miss Granger was quite right in assuming that I don't want my private life or hers made public in all the scandal sheets! Still, I never would ahve handed her over to taht monster just to protect what's left of me good name!" Snape barked.

Hermione, meanwhile, had uncharacteristically started to cry, from the sheer humiliation of it all, and Snape could feel the sleeve of his robe, where she was hiding her face, getting wet.

His rage intensified.

Dumbledore could see that Snape was puffing up with rage and getting ready to lock horns with the next buck who challenged him, so he stood up once more, and attempted to defuse the situation.

"Thank you, Hermione, that was very brave of you to divulge your secret. Don't look so furious, Severus. One order member would never betray the confidence of another. Unless they wished to court expulsion and disgrace. Although it is not necessary for Severus and Hermione to explain themselves to us, I would like to add that before this relationship began, Professor Snape informed me of what was going on and I gave him my blessing. Some of us in this room came from May-December families, and it's not uncommon for a professor to fall in love with his student, or a mistress or master with his or her apprentice. Now, with that said, I think we should concentrate on the very serious matter at hand, which regards the safety of on of our members who is also one of my students. Miss Grainger, why didn't you tell anyone about this before?"

Hermione pulled herself together, rapidly, and emerged from Snape's protective embrace.

She knew damn well why she hadn't told anyone before; it was because she thought that Harry Ron and Snape would drag Crich out into the courtyard, rip his arms out and beat him to death with them. And if they told Hagrid why they'd done it he probably would have buried Crich under the floor of his hut and then they'd all go to Azkaban, together.

So, Severus Snape's protégé concocted a smooth and convincing little white lie.

"When I found out about the answer key distribution, Professor Snape told me that he had concocted the scheme with the help of Mad, I mean, Alastor, and so I thought we might be discussing Professor Crich at this meeting. Also, it was very embarrassing for me, divulging the private details of my personal life to everybody in the order."

"Oh, that's awright, Hermione. I mean everybody knows that Snape's your bloke and he's Harry's Dad, anyway." Tonks piped up.

"Tonks!" Her husband admonished her.

"Bollocks, Remus! 'Arry looks just like 'im!"

She couldn't stand to see the Emperor parading about without any clothes on and everybody going on as to how his trousers fit so nicely.

"Oh no, not that old rumour again. Please, Tonks, I've just eaten. I'm not so fond of the old boy as I'd want to even think about him being me Dad. What a load of bollocks!" Harry groaned.

"Shut up, Potter! You'd have been better off if I was your father, you'd still have one! As for you, Nymphadora, you'd be a better Auror today if you had read your textbooks more often than the Tattler. Have you mastered Scourgify, yet?"

"Now you look here, Snape. You are not going to talk to my wife like that!"

"What are you going to do, Remus? Bite me?"

Dumbledore had to call the meeting to order, again.

"Alright, alright, everyone back to their corners! End of Round One! Tonks. please, it's not nice to spread hurtful rumours about, especially not at Order meetings. Remus, Severus didn't mean your wife any harm. Severus, you didn't have to be so defensive and grouchy. And Harry, show Professor Snape a little more respect. He has saved your life on several different occasions and he is your sponsor at WAND. Speaking of which, Aberforth, let's have the butterbeer and snacks before hostilities break out."

The meeting ended with the decision that Oliver Crich would be sacked from Hogwarts, pending an official investigation into the serious charges Hermione Granger had laid against him, as well as the mounting suspicions that and his werewolf wife were involved in a series of murders.

It then broke up with the aforementioned butterbeer and snacks.

Remus Lupin casually made his way over to where Snape was standing with Sirius Black, having a heated conversation.

"Sorry about Tonks, Severus. She doesn't know anything concrete, but she's a good enough Auror to suspect."

"You know? Who told you?" Snape demanded

He gave Harry's godfather a dirty look.

"I've never told another soul, living or dead!" Sirius protested.

"It's in the scent, Severus. My lips are sealed." Lupin promised.

"I told Dumbledore if he left it go this long that people were going to start to figure it out! Some fucking secret!"

"Nobody bought it. They all looked at Tonks like she was mad. Sorry, Remus." Sirius assured Snape.

Harry was studiously ignoring the three of them.

He didn't know if both of them knew, or if either of them knew that he knew, or even if they knew that he knew, if it would be appropriate for him to let them know that he knew that they knew.

"Ron, could you get me another butterbeer? I have to sit down. My brain hurts." Harry finally said.

* * *

Later, the group going back to Hogwarts were all unusually quiet as they stepped out of the hearth in the Great Hall.

"Ah, Professor, Hermione, ah, I'm going to keep schtum. Really. I won't tell anyone." Ron said.

He had never believed it was true, about Snape and Hermione, but apparently it was.

Ron tried not to think about how nasty that was.

What the fuck was wrong with her?

"You had better not, Mr. Weasley. I know all about you and Moaning Myrtle, and at the very least, what you're up to is against school regulations." Snape warned him.

Ron made a very quick exit back to Gryffindor Tower.

"Professor Snape, you didn't have to do that." Hermione told him.

"Just a little insurance policy, Miss Granger. You've had a long night, you should probably go back to your room and get some rest. I'll send Treacher to look in on you, later." Snape replied.

Hermione said that would be nice, and gracefully made her exit.

Harry was about to say something about them not having to play it up on his account, but he decided to keep schtum, as well, and waited to speak until after Hermione had gone.

Snape surprised him by speaking first.

"I'm sorry about what I said about James Potter. He's just as much your father as I am, and you're a lot worse off from the loss of him. And we're both far worse off without Lily. I had to say something though! Secret, my arse! Still, that was a good save on your part, Potter."

"Well, I didn't mean what I said, either. Like you said, I had to say something. It's not so bad, you being me Dad. I don't mind it at all, anymore. It's, yunno, it's awright." Harry stammered.

An uncomfortable moment passed between them.

"Well, I imagine you'll want to go see Hermione. That rat bastard motherfucker Crich! I don't think he's going to go so easy as Dumbledore thinks." Harry diverted.

"He's not, Potter. And Albus doesn't think he's going to go down without a fight.. Mad-Eye has a detail of Aurors patrolling the hallways, the grounds, and Hogsmeade, but I'm still concerned about Miss Weasley and you and Miss Grainger. Crich will know his neck's in the noose for sure this time. And he'll know who put it there. I want you to take Miss Weasley to the Room of Requirement and I want you to stay there until Monday. Crich will be off the premises by then. The Room will protect both of you, and she'll be safe, there. Safe from ripping Crich to shreds as well as safe from being ripped to shreds by him. I'm going to bring Hermione here and keep her here with me. And then, on Monday we teachers can post the scores for the finals, and you students can get them and we can all fucking go home for Chrimble." Snape finished.

"I hope." Harry said.

He went off to perform the unhappy task of telling Ginny she had to miss a fight, and decided he'd come up with a good lie.

A little white lie.

Something to keep her from being gruesomely murdered by a sex case werewolf sadist serial killer.

Or, on the other hand, something to keep her from transforming, running up to Crich's office, breaking through the door, tearing off his head and batting it around in her paws like a football, and going straight to Azkaban.

* * *

When Hermione arrived in Snape's rooms with Treacher carrying the bag with her things for the weekend in it and Crookshanks at her heels, she tried to let on like everything was fine and normal.

Snape wasn't having any of that.

"Hermione, you've just had to tell all of your colleagues that you and I have been engaging in bayonet practise for years, and you're here hiding out because you don't want a sadistic homicidal werewolf sex maniac to try and made good on his threat to torture and rape you. Don't act like you don't care a monkey's about it!" he rebuked her.

"Well what d'you want to do? Blag on and on about it all night? And all day tomorrow and the day after that?" Hermione insisted

"No. I just don't want you to put on that plastic scouser bit you do like you're tougher than you really are!"

"Fuck you! I'm every bit as tough as I think I am! And I am not a plastic scouser! Just because I live in Woolton! John Lennon was from Woolton! And me Dad's from Vauxhall! Just because you grew up in the End near Kenny with the Mersey runnin' past your window it don't make you any more a Scouser or less than me! That might be where your lot ended up, but they all came from West Derby, don't they?"

"They came from the Dingle. The Princes never had money and me old man was an orphan from Glasgow. My grandfather worked long and hard for many years and me Mum and Dad too to get their semi-detached house in West Derby and I'll thank you not to sneer at it!"

"And I'll thank you not to sneer at me Dad and Mum for working hard as they did to be able to afford to move from Vauxhall to Woolton!"

They were both staring daggers at each other, until Hermione started to laugh.

"Shite, listen to us trying to out-Working Class Hero each other. Anybody who heard us wouldn't know what we were on about." She said.

"Most of this lot are Southerners anyway. They think we were both a couple of thick Northerners no matter what we said." Snape decided.

"That was a decent thing you did, Severus, standing up for me. I would have kept your name out of it, you didn't have to do that."

"Yes I did, Hermione. I'd be less than a man if I left you to twist in the wind like that. I meant it. I'm not ashamed and I don't think we've done anything wrong."

"Do you really want to marry me, Snape? I mean, I appreciate the gesture, but I don't know if I'm the marrying kind. Still, it was a nice thing to say. "

"I wouldn't mind it. But you're only 18, Granger. Too young to think about marriage. If we're still sitting here in about ten years, then we'll talk about that."

Hermione just sort of nodded, and Snape lit a ciagrette and started looking for the remote.

"I'm going to go put the kettle on, and have a bath. It's been my experience that no matter what happens it's amazing how much better you feel after a hot bath and a nice cup of tea."

"If I felt like that when I was your age, my life would have been a hell of a lot easier." Snape mused.

He put a record on and sat in his chair, listening to it and thinking about the events of the past few months.

He decided he needed some time to think.

To ruminate about all that had changed in his life, about everything that was still changing and the momentous events that were soon to come. This would be a perfect weekend to do it.

Hermione called to him from the bathroom.

"How would you like a hot bath and a nice cup of tea, Sev? There's plenty of room for two, and I brought an extra teacup."

Snape was out of his chair and his robes like a shot.

"Fuck it. If I die in this war, I'll have plenty of time to think in me grave." He said to himself as he tossed his grubby grey y-fronts onto the floor and strode manfully into the loo.

Potter was right.

A man had to have some vices, otherwise he might as well be dead.

**Glossary (for past, present and future reference. There may be updates in later chapters.)  
**

Berk: Rhyming slang for cunt

Toerag: Stupid useless person

GBH: Grievous Bodily Harm

Schtum, keep Schtum: Be quiet, keep quiet about something

Chrimble: Christmas

Double Geschvinn: Really fast, as in "We ran from the cops, double geschvinn."

To take it on one's toes: Run away, flee, get lost

Knocked for six: See gobsmacked

Gobsmacked: Surprised to the point of stupidity.

Prezzie: Present

Khazi: toilet

Loo: Bathroom

Shag: To have sex with someone

Roger: To have sex with someone in an extremely vigorous fashion, especially in doggie position.

Blag: To bluff, to go on and on about something

Northerner: Any English person north of Birmingham, England

Southerner: Any person south of Birmingham, England

Telly: Television

Ass or arse over teakettle: Fallling in such a way that your legs go out from under you and you land on your ass.

Bonce: The head

Crust: The head

Pork sword, mutton javelin, dick, cock, johnson, old fellow, etc: Penis. But you knew that already.

Bayonet Practise: Sex

Cricket set: Male genitals.

Poof: Gay person. Not as bad as "Faggot" but not a nice word, either.

Fag: A cigarette

Junk: Heroin

Scrag: Heroin

Ganja: Marijuana

Purple Doom: Wizarding drug

Dragon's fire: injectable mixture of purple doom and heroin

Chasing the dragon: In Wizarding terms, someone who uses dragon's fire

Bugger: Figuratively, like saying "Oh shit". Literally, to screw somebody in the ass.

Top: The bugggerer.

Bottom: The buggeree.

Glory Hole: Hole cut into stall in men's bathroom to extend a wram welcome to interested parties next door

Bugger up: To screw something up, badly.

Scouser: Resident of Liverpool, applies more to working-class than middle-class.

Woolton: Middle-class Liverpool suburb

Kenny: Short for Kensington, working-class area of Liverpool known by middle-class person as a "bad neighbourhood."

The End: Short for Spinner's End, in this story, a run-down and extremely disreputable council estate in Kensington where Snape grew up.

Vauxhall: Working-class area in Liverpool

The Dingle: Working-class area in Liverpool

Plastic scouser: Disparaging nickname the working-class in the city have for the middle-class in the suburbs.


	10. The Wizards' Duel

**Chapter Ten: The Wizard's Duel**

Saturday dawned late in the morning, cold and bleak, a gray day of deep snow and howling winds. Nonetheless, it was a glorious day for most of the students at Hogwarts.

Finals were over, and they had a whole weekend to relax, unwind, and get ready to go home for the holidays.

It began as a lovely morning for Professor Crich, as well.

It was the morning of his revenge against that thick Northerner Snape and his hoity-toity plastic scouser protégé, not to mention Potter, Snape's disagreeable whelp, and the lioness.

They were all going to pay for fucking about with Oliver Crich. Granger would come willingly, to protect Snape, and he had a special fate in store for Miss Know-It-All.

After he had his fun with her, he'd leave her with a bite. See if Snape, or the Merlin School, or anyone else wanted her once she was a werewolf.

And a bite for the lioness, too, after he lured her to save Granger. Turning the Weasley girl into a werewolf was as good as killing her as well. She was a savage brute without werewolf blood in her veins; with it, she'd be uncontrollably violent.

Death, Crich thought, chuckling, would follow her to school like Mary's little lamb.

She'd end in Azkaban or with her head on the block and Granger would end in disgrace. That would be enough to push Potter back off the wagon, and then Crich's revenge on Snape, who had hounded him all these years, would be complete.

The werewolf ex-auror was so sure that he had all his ducks in a row that he was quite surprised when Potter had all the right answers on the exam.

When he saw that Granger did too, he became somewhat alarmed.

Something was going on.

Then, when all of his seventh years received perfect scores, Crich could see that the hand of Severus Snape in the debacle, quite clearly.

He went to the Headmaster's Office, immediately.

Mad-Eye Moody and a veritable army of Aurors, along with Centurions Lupin and Firenze were waiting for him.

It was a trap, and he walked right into it.

"Oliver, I'm afraid we're going to have to remove you from your position. These gentlemen are here to escort you home. Mrs. Crich is already waiting for you, there." Dumbledore said, as kindly as possible.

Crich knew that the jig was up. They'd take him home, and put him under house arrest, and now they had Granger as a witness against him.

They already had Mirabella, as well.

It didn't take the shifty DADA professor long to switch sides.

After all, that was what he did best.

"Before you lock me away and toss out the key, I can tell you things about Voldemort. I know where he is. I know what his plans are. Let's be reasonable." He entreated Dumbledore.

The expression in Albus Dumbledore's eyes, however, was no longer kindly.

"Were you reasonable with the girls that you tortured, killed, and cannibalised? The Ministry is not willing to make deals with a criminal who has committed the kind of atrocities you have, Oliver. I'm afraid you've served your purpose, in this war. It's all over for you, now."

* * *

Meanwhile, the morning was as foul inside as it was outside for Harry Potter and Severus Snape.

Neither Ginny nor Hermione particularly appreciated being left out of the Crich operation just because they were women whom he had possibly targeted for rape and slaughter.

Respectively, Harry and Snape tried kindness, and reason, and persuasion and magic, and of course, sex.

None of that worked.

Snape resorted to the time honoured law of Might makes Right.

As he was larger and stronger than Hermione, he got the drop on her, picked her up, carried her into the bedroom, then closed, locked and warded the doors.

As for Ginny and Harry, the Room of Requirement already knew that she wasn't supposed to leave, and would not let her out.

Somehow, though, she still considered it Harry's fault, and they had a very large fight.

Dumbledore had asked Remus Lupin to send for Severus Snape, and Lupin was not sure if Severus was in the Room of Requirement, or if Harry was.

When he got close enough to the door he could hear that Harry was occupying the ROR, and so was Ginny.

"…had better get away from that fucking door, you cunt! I'll rip your fucking throat out, you fucking junkie bastard!"

"It's not up to me, it's the Room! If it was up to me I'd let you go by now! See if I care! I can have any woman I want in the world! You go ahead, get bitten by a werewolf! I'm sure your good friend Lucius Malfoy would like you even more!"

Lucius Malfoy? Him too?

Tactfully, Remus hurried past, en-route to the dungeon to find Snape.

He couldn't help but observe that Snape looked like hell when he answered his door.

"Tell me he resisted arrest and you had to kill him."

"That would have made things much easier. What did you do to Hermione?"

"Locked her in the bedroom, didn't I? Warded the door."

"Harry's having trouble with Ginny, as well. They don't like being left out of this." Lupin observed.

"We certainly made soldiers of them. Howling for blood, both of them. So, what's gone wrong?"

"I've been talking to Tonks and Alastor. Between us and the Muggles we don't have enough evidence to put Crich away on murder. He'll get two years at the most for blackmail. What we need is a confession."

Snape's face brightened up, considerably.

"Has the Ministry approved the use of persuasive techniques?"

"Not too persuasive."

"No hanging in chains?"

"And no red-hot poker. More's the pity. But we can force a little truth potion on him. Or a lot. In the presence of qualified Aurors, of course."

"Anything to get away from this racket. Get your wife and Mad-Eye to the old torture chamber. Bring Crich. I'll be ready in about fifteen minutes. I just need to find somebody to watch Granger. Wait. Scratch that."

Snape got an evil smile on his face.

"I have a plan. I know how we can quiet Hermione and Ginny, and get Crich to sing like a fucking canary, as well."

* * *

Dumbledore had him going in the office, but after he thought about it for awhile, Oliver Crich became unconcerned about his fate once more.

The most they had him on was blackmail. And he knew he could do another one to five in Azkaban standing on his head.

Until Nymphadora Lupin and Alastor Moody brought him into the old torture chamber, where Severus Snape, a metal table, a few rows of chairs and a very bright light awaited him.

Sirius Black and Albus Dumbledore were also present.

Potter, Granger and the lioness and her brother sat in one of the rows of chairs, staring daggers at him.

"Sit down, Oliver." Snape invited him, pleasantly.

He was smiling as happily and as madly as the Cheshire Cat, himself.

Crich sat down.

"You think you're so smart, don't you, Snape?"

"Yes, I do. And I'll tell you why. Because you are going to make a full confession, right here, in the presence of these two fine Aurors."

"What makes you think I'll do that?"

"Well, Mr. Justice Black, here, tells me that you have to drink the truth serum willingly in order for your confession to be admissible in court. And you are going to drink it, willingly."

"And why is that?"

"Miss Weasley, Remus, would you be so kind?"

Harry had seen Ginny shape-shift into her lioness form many times, but he had never seen a man change into a werewolf, especially not on cue.

He was still recovering from the tidbit of information that his godfather was a Justice on the Wizarding High Court when he witnessed Remus Lupin transform into a werewolf right before his eyes.

It was more ghastly than anything he had ever seen in the movies.

It looked like the werewolf was growing out of his old professor's body. His skin split and you could see his bones and muscles moving beneath it. Coarse hair sprouted up all over his tortured body like fast growing grass overtaking a desert landscape.

The worst part, however was watching the obscene contortions of Lupin's head as his human features turned into a hybrid of man and wolf.

His screams turned into howls and Harry had to bite his lip to keep from screaming.

Ron reached for his hand, and Harry was not ashamed to take it.

"Harry. I think I might have pissed meself a little." Ron whispered.

"Me too." Harry admitted.

However, as Harry and Ron tried not to look like they were cowering in mortal terror, even though they were, Ginny calmly went about the business of transfiguration, and Hermione drew her wand.

They both stepped over to the huge, fearsome werewolf as nicely as you please.

The three of them advanced on Oliver Crich.

Who went a whiter shade of pale.

"Drink, or I'll turn you over to the lot of them." Snape announced.

Two snarling beasts and one angry witch, the tip of whose wand was glowing with anticipation closed in on Crich.

He knew that had he so much as sprouted a wolfish ear, he'd been in pieces.

Trapped, again.

"Give me the potion." He said, through clenched teeth.

"Drink it all. Bottoms up." Snape encouraged him.

Crich drank.

Seeing their extreme distress, Dumbledore walked over to Ron and Harry.

"You boys are supposed to be here to look threatening. You're not doing a very good job." He joked.

Harry and Ron were too terrified to appreciate the humour.

"You are quite safe. Remus has spent the last five years in rigorous training with the Knights of Albion. He's completely in control of himself. They've shown him how to integrate his wolf and human selves so that he can have the benefit of both in whatever state he's in. Eventually, transformation will no longer even be painful for him. He's already risen to the rank of Centurion, which is rate for a wizard under fifty. Remus is a very powerful wizard, moreso than he lets on, and he was one of your father's best friends. And you are going to be the godfather to his child. His pregnant wife is standing right over there. What happened to drawing and quartering and red-hot pokers?" Dumbledore asked.

"Weasley! Potter! Quit quaking in the corner like a couple of virgin schoolgirls! And you two want to be aurors! The women, one of who is pregnant, are making a better showing than you. Are you going to piss your little pink d knickers for Voldemort, too? Wands out! Lets' go!" Snape ordered.

"Don't you think you're being a bit rough on them, Severus?"

Harry and Ron felt a lot better when they heard even a snarly, rumbling version of their old professor's voice come out of the throat of the large and frightening bull werewolf.

It turned to face them, and though its eyes were yellow, they were clearly the eyes of Remus Lupin.

"No, Remus. I don't. You two sit there. Look menacing. That's better, Potter. Now give Crich the murderous look, and not me. He may try to make a break for the door. Miss Weasley, leave that rat alone. Are we all seated. Good. Minister Dumbledore?" Snape inquired.

"As the acting Minister of Magic, for the Ministry-in-exile, I hereby authorise this chamber as an emergency investigative detention centre, for the purposes of interrogating Oliver Crich."

Dumbledore was the acting Minister for Magic? There was a Ministry-In-Exile?

That was also news to Harry.

"Judge Black, may I begin?" Alastor Moody asked.

"You may."

"Oliver Crich, did you threaten Hermione Granger in any way?"

"I wouldn't call it a threat. I was more of a business proposition. An offer, really. She would have liked me better that you, Severus."

"Not bloody likely, Oliver." Snape muttered to himself.

"Confine you answers to the questions, please. What was this offer that you mentioned?"

"A night with her to do as I wished in exchange for her silence. Not that I intended to live up to the bargain. I planned to take her and to expose her and Snape, anyway."

"What if she did not submit?"

Crich smiled; he looked more wolfish and predatory than Lupin did.

"I have no aversion to rape. Although it would have been the first time I did so with one of my own kind, instead of a worthless Muggle. She is a Mudblood, anyway, so there wasn't much difference."

"What have you done to Muggle women?"

"I'm the famous Werewolf Murderer. Read the papers."

"Do you have an accomplice?"

"Mirabella is not my accomplice. I'd thank you not to couch your questions in criminal terms. Unlike that lapdog freak over there, Mirabella and I have accepted our predatory nature. Humans, especially Muggles, are our natural prey. We have every right, as both magi and werewolves to do what we like with them. And if we had a little fun with them before we killed them, what of it?"

"What kind of fun?"

"Have you ever read the works of the Dark Wizard De Sade? We took some of our inspiration from him. But my wife, especially, has a very inventive mind." Crich chuckled.

"Thank you, Mr. Crich. Judge Black?" Moody finished

"He's a judge?" Crich asked

"Things have changed since the Ministry Mutiny, Oliver." Dumbledore interjected

"Yes, Captain Moody. Based on that confession the Crown as under the Wizarding Act of 1066 is prepared to indict Mr. Crich on a very long list of crimes. I would ask the Aurors to transfer him to the County Wizarding Prison, pending a hearing in the High Court, first thing Monday morning. Minister Dumbledore?"

"I hereby conclude these proceedings. Detective Lupin, Captain Moody, please remove the prisoner."

Crich noticed that his antagonists ahd relaxed and retreated somewhat.

Just enough for him to make a divedrsion nad get away.

A big diversion.

He leapt up, produced a wand from a secret sheath in his robes and pointed it directly at Albus Dumbledore.

"Not before I remove you!" he cried.

"_Expelliarmus!"_

Dumbledore found that odd.

He was quite sure he hadn't said "_Expelliarmus_" , yet. Then he realised he hadn't, because Hermione Granger had beat him to it.

"You leave the Headmaster out of this, Crich! This started out between you, and me. Let's finish it that way. Get your wand."

"You want to duel with me, witch? Me?" Crich asked Hermione.

"Snape…" Harry began.

"Let it go, Potter. Oh, and you and Weasley may want to move your chairs to the far wall. This is not going to be pretty." Snape informed them.

"You don't think she needs help?" Ron asked.

"No. I think Crich needs help. And he'll have to pray to the Devil to get it, because even the gods can't save him, now. That said, if she does need help, I will be ready. You and Mr. Weasley make yourselves scarce. Crich doesn't fight fair." Snape replied.

Meanwhile, the sparring between Hermione and Professor Crich continued.

"You bet your arse I do. I've killed better men than you, and never given it a second thought. What's one more?"

Professor Crich laughed.

He liked her style.

"Indeed. What's one more? To the death, then, Miss Granger?"

"If you insist, Professor."

Crich immediately threw out a few spells without even warning her that they were going to engage, one of which Hermione had never heard of that sent her tumbling end over end into the far wall of the chamber.

It was a good thing Snape had taught her that duelling was as much physical as it was mental, because she managed to keep her wand in her hand, and fired back a few simple spells of her own before she even regained her footing.

"_Stupefy! Expelliarimus!_"

Crich was stunned, and disarmed.

This man was an auror? She couldn't believe she had defeated him so fast, and with such basic skills.

It was, however a duel to the death.

Hermione raised her wand once more.

"Not so fast, my bold Gryffindor. Who says I'm going to fight fair?"

It only took him a minute to change into his werewolf form, and he did it in mid-air.

Hermione stood her ground and pointed her wand but the werewolf's pounce had knocked it from her hands before she could speak.

The wand skittered across the room.

With the exception of Professor Snape, the adult wizards on the room stood up in their chairs, wands at the ready and were about to defend helpless Hermione when she gave most of them a big surprise.

She calmly placed her hand on the creature that had pinned her to the floor, and drew her index finger across it's throat.

"_SECTUMSEMPRA! REVULSUM!" _she bellowed, forcefully, casting her teacher's most infamous spell and the revulsion jinx in the same breath.

The room was filled with a blinding purple light and the coppery smell of blood as Hermione's voice echoed resoundingly against the wet stone walls.

The force of the spell propelled the hulking werewolf away from his opponent as if he were made of paper. A very large gash appeared forcefully across the werewolf's throat, and his body flew back into the row of chairs, spraying a trail of bright red arterial blood from Hermione's robes all the way across the room.

He landed right beside her wand.

Hermione followed him.

There were several chairs in her way and she blasted them out of her way, making sweeping motions with her extended right hand.

The chairs flew from her path as if blown in a whirlwind.

"Thought you were going to bit me, did you? And I'd just roll over and let you? _Reducto!_ Just who do you thing you're fucking with? _Reducto!_ _Reducto!_ Some frightened, helpless girl? Some…_Reducto!_...silly teenage bint who wants to live dangerously. _Reducto_!"

She reached her target.

"Who do you think you are? Do you know who I am?" Crich gurgled, as he tried to regain his feet.

He had transformed back into his human shape as his body prepared for death.

Though mortally wounded, Crich refused to accept death.

He spun around, wand in hand, looking to take a hostage, but his path was blocked by an enraged lioness.

He raised his wand to her and she reared up on her hind legs, roaring and swiped at him with her paw, laying him open from his shoulder to his thigh.

With bone and muscle and gut showing through the deep wounds, Crich turned back to face Hermione.

"I'm Hermione Granger of the Order of the Phoenix. And you are the next Death Eater I'm going to send to Hell." She answered.

The dying werewolf rushed her, and as he leapt, Hermione raised her wand again, and lifted him high over her head, high into the air.

"_Wingardium leviosa!_"

She held Crich steady in the spell with her wand, propelling him high into the vault of the ceiling.

She jerked her wand all the way to the left and slammed the dark wizard into one wall of the chamber.

There was a sickening sound, like an eighteen-wheel lorry driving slowly over a road made from eggshells.

Then she jerked her wand all the way to the right and slammed him into the other wall.

Blood ran down the walls and spattered like raindrops all over the torture chamber.

Hermione lowered her wand and the werewolf crashed to the stone floor of the chamber with a wet, meaty thud.

With trembling hands, Crich attempted to move his broken body enough to point his wand at Hermione.

"Uh..Uhh…"

She knelt next to him.

"What's that, Professor? I can't hear you. You'll have to speak up."

"Uhh…Uhhhvaahduh…uhhhvaaduh k-k-k…" the dying creature croaked.

Hermione grabbed him by the hair and stood up, yanking the werewolf with her.

"Oh, I know what you're trying to say!"

She jammed her wand against his head.

"_AVADA KEDAVRA_!"

The ways she spat the words at him, it sounded like a curse.

Hermione's wand flashed an intense, brilliant green. The curse enveloped the dying Death Eater with such great force that it knocked him out of Hermione's grasp.

When his battered, broken, dead body crashed to the stone floor, it split open and his mostly severed head came loose, and rolled away.

The Lioness walked up to the body, sniffed at it, then put her paw on its ruined chest and roared in triumph.

Harry could not help but notice that the expression on the head's face was one of extreme surprise.

He had this odd feeling like he didn't know whether he wanted to laugh, or puke.

With Crich dead and the duel over, the room was eerily quiet.

Hermione stepped over the nasty spectacle of Crich's remains, and walked over to her superior officer.

"Snape, that was disappointingly easy. I thought he'd put up more of a fight."

"Crich wasn't much of a wizard. The only ace he had up his sleeve was being a werewolf. Once you took that advantage from him by mortally wounding him, he didn't have anything left."

Hermione looked around the room.

"The rotten berk died hard, didn't he? That's the part I hate about combat. The mess. Headmaster, can I use the showers in Professor Snape's lab to wash up?"

"Yes. Then I would like to see you in my office. Leave your shoes, please. Let's not make a mess in the hallway. " Dumbledore replied.

Hermione left the torture chamber.

"Why, Albus? They're not in trouble, are they?" Mad-Eye Moody asked.

"They didn't violate the Duelling Code of 1066. Crich cheated, which gave Hermione the right to obtain another wizard's assistance. As an animagus, Ginny is allowed to transform during a duel. As an Order member, Hermione is privileged to use Unforgivables when faced with imminent deadly force. I don't see any violations, do you Alastor?" Sirius Black volunteered.

"No. All perfectly legal. Tonks?"

"I think Hermione saved the taxpayin' public a lot of money." Tonks volunteered.

"I was already under orders from the Doge to enforce capital punishment on Oliver Crich, if I was able to do so under Wizarding Law. I passed those orders on to Yeomen Weasley." Remus Lupin, who had unobtrusively changed back at some point, explained.

"What makes you all think I want to severely punish Miss Granger and Miss Weasley? I'll admit, Oliver caught me off guard. They may have saved my life."

Harry popped up out of the corner.

"I thought it was brilliant! Messy, but brilliant!" he explained.

At one point, he and Snape and Ron had been cheering Hermione on like spectators at a Quidditch match.

Meanwhile, however, Ron looked as though he was actually going to puke.

"Can I be excused, Headmaster?" he asked

"Certainly, Mr. Weasley. I think we should all like to be excused. Would you e good enough to please go and get Mr. Filch? Tell him to bring some house elves with strong stomachs. Now, I suggest we all scourgify ourselves, and have a bath and a cup of tea. Miss Weasley, drop that head or I shall take 20 points from Gryffindor! Kindly resume your normal shape and go use the dungeon lab showers. I wasn't to see you in my office too, when you're finished. And you leave your shoes, as well."

That was all for Harry.

"There goes lunch!" he announced, and ran out of the torture chamber with his hand clapped over his mouth.

* * *

Snape's was the closet bathroom, and even though Harry had been far away enough that he hadn't got any blood or gore on himself he stuffed his robes into Snape's hamper after he lost three days worth of meals, and flushed the khazi.

Then he immediately jumped into the shower.

He wasn't sure if Snape would be pissed about him not using the lab showers, but Hermione and Ginny were in there.

"Such a fucking mess. Werewolves always make such a fucking mess. Even when they die. Is that you in there, Potter?" he suddenly heard the old man mutter

"Yeah. Sorry about the khazi."

"It's understandable. I thought something like this might happen, so I didn't eat this morning. I'll have Treacher clean up. After seeing me through me druggie, drunken years, he's used to it."

When Harry came out of the shower some of his clothes were waiting for him, most likely courtesy of Treacher.

He got dressed and found Snape in the parlour, dropping four Alka-Seltzers into a glass of water.

He handed Harry the box, and the glass.

"Snape, can I ask you a personal question? Man to man?"

"Go ahead, Potter."

"How the fuck am I ever going to be able to touch Ginny again?"

"Try to forget everything you saw, today. And try leaving off the blow jobs for awahile." Snape suggested.

"I really need a drink. I wish I could have one fucking drink." Harry mused.

"Me too." Snape agreed.

* * *

Hermione and Ginny, now cleaned up, were sitting in the Headmaster's office.

Sirius Black had managed to walk calmly into the courtyard before violent illness overcame him, and Kreacher had to come and take him home.

Mad-Eye Moody was nonplussed, and so was Tonks. They, as Aurors, had seen it all, and apparated back to the Ministry with a rather small body-bag for the morgue to begin writing a very, very, very long report.

Moody agreed with Tonks that it was a big mess, but it had saved the taxpayers some money, and Crich had well and truly asked for it.

Mr. Filch got one look in the torture chamber and he wouldn't let the house elves go in. He farmed out the job to the Gringotts' Disaster Restoration service, waited for the Goblins to arrive, paid them, and went to the infirmary to have the memory obliviated.

Dumbledore made no such choice, though, and though he was thankful for what Hermione and Ginny had done to save him, he had some advice to give them on their methods.

"That was very brave of the two of you, and I thank you for rescuing me, but it was also a foolish thing to do. There were other more senior Order members, a Judge, two Professors, and two Aurors present. I think any one or combination of them would have been able to handle the situation." Dumbledore explained.

"Honestly, Headmaster. I think we had Crich on the ropes right from the start. We had it all planned out ahead of time." Ginny protested.

"Exactly. You and Hermione had already decided to take matters into your own hands, without clearing your actions with your superiors, or without help from more experienced magi. It was a dangerous thing you did. You could have both been bitten. Then what would you do? There is an important lesson for you girls to learn. When we battle Voldemort it is important that we that we all work together and do our own parts, and stick to our plans. There will be no room for unilateral decisions, or grandstanding. Had the gamble you two took not paid off, you could have been responsible for Crich's escape, for the deaths of everyone in the chamber, for any number of horrors. And we will not get a second chance if our plan to defeat Tom Riddle fails? Do you understand?" Dumbledore asked.

"Yes, headmaster." The girls chorused.

"Now, although you broke no laws, the two of you violated quite a few school regulations. Technically, I could expel you both for your conduct. But that would be extremely unfair, especially considering that your conduct saved my old hide while I was napping at the wheel. So, I am willing to chalk your overzealousness up to misplaced bravado, and being full of what my father used to call piss, wind and excitement, if you'll pardon my language. I will not take any house points from you. You will lose your Hogsmeade privileges from the first day of the term until Valentine's Day. You may still attend the Yule Ball, but you will also be required to do detention with Professor Snape for one week at the beginning of the new term. And I will also be notifying your parents. On the other hand, as Acting Minister for Magic, and not your Headmaster, I will see to it you receive Commendations for bravery, and when I speak to your parents I will mention that, first." Dumbledore finished.

"But I've never had detention! I've never been in trouble at school in me life!" Hermione protested.

"And me Mum said that if I got in trouble again she'd ground me until I was thirty! When will I ever see Harry?" Ginny added.

"I don't think Molly will be that angry, Ginny. And everyone gets a detention or two, Hermione. The Merlin School will not turn you down because of a few detentions. I'm sorry, ladies. I 

know you think you were the heroes of the day, and you were. But you can't let your lives and the lives of others take a back seat to your desire to prove that you are great heroes, especially not then you're doing so just because you can."

"Great." Hermione sighed, sinking into her chair.

"Lovely." Ginny echoed.

"I'm sorry, girls, but you really should have thought of that. Ginny, your mother and father are here to speak to you. Hermione, Professor Snape wants to see you in his office. Immediately."

Ginny and Hermione trooped out of Dumbledore's office like they were on their way to the executioner's axe.

After they were gone, Professor Dumbledore called Remus Lupin back into his office.

"I hope they understand why they're being both rewarded and punished, Remus.""I do think you were a bit hard on them, Albus. Did you see how cool and collected Granger was? Can you believe a witch that young can do magic like that without a wand? She is brilliant. And Weasley is absolutely fearless. They had it timed to the second. It was quite an operation."

"Yes, it was. But we can't have them taking risks like that."

"True. Still, I wouldn't want to be Granger right now. Snape was furious that you were giving me half the DADA classes and him the other half and he's most likely livid with her to begin with."

Dumbledore shook his head

"Poor Hermione." He agreed.

* * *

Molly and Arthur were relieved to see that Ginny was still alive, proud of her for being so brave, but angry with her and disappointed that she had broken school rules and taken action on their own without the permission of senior members of the Order.

"Okay, Mum, where's the axe?"

"Your father and I have decided to follow Albus' advice, and be merciful. We are proud of you for being so brave, but disappointed that you'd be so foolish. You may still go to the Yule Ball. And we're not going to put coal in your Christmas stocking. But you are grounded for the holidays. All of the holidays. The only place you're going is the yard, or back to Hogwarts, early. And then, only by a week. I've a good mind to say Harry can't visit, either, but I don't want to punish him along with you. So, Harry may visit you once a week. And if I hear one word of protest out of your mouth, Ginevra Weasley, I will make things a lot worse for you. A lot. We wanted to come and see you in person, to let you know how serious this is. We'll be back to come and get you on Monday, after the Yule Ball."

"All I was going to say is that I don't think Harry will want to see me, anyway. I'll just have Dobby bring my things, and go home now."

She was thinking about how he ran out of the torture chamber with his hand over his mouth, saw her, turned greener and kept running.

The three of them had got into Arthur's new flying car, a Ford Fairlane, when Dobby did not being Ginny's trunk, he brought Harry Potter.

Ginny cranked it down.

"Please, Arthur, please, Molly, please let Ginny come to the Yule Ball. You know that Fred and George and Ron are playing with their band! It'll be my first formal occasion sober in two years! She didn't do anything wrong. Dumbledore is just covering all the bases. That Crich used to get at her all time. He said nasty, filthy things to her and made obscene suggestions. He used to bump into her and try to touch her and everything. He had it coming." Harry begged.

"Filthy things? Obscene suggestions? Touch her where?" Arthur demanded.

"Arthur, please. He's dead. In pieces. Harry, I didn't say Ginny couldn't go to the ball. She didn't think you wanted to go with her, for some reason."

"Wot, an old junkie like me? I've looked Tom Riddle in the face, I've been as far from a Dementor as I am from this window, I've been inside a basilisk's mouth, and I've seen the inside of Ginny's locker. After a Quidditch match. Takes more than a few bits of werewolf to put me off!" Harry announced.

Ginny came barrelling out of the car and hugged Harry and kissed him.

"We'll see you on Monday, dear. Let's go, Arthur."

Harry disengaged himself from Ginny and waved goodbye to Mr. Weasley, who was giving him a bit of a dirty look.

If he would have seen the way Ginny kissed Harry after he and Molly left, he would have strangled him.

* * *

The walk from Dumbledore's office to Snape's rooms was the longest of Hermione's life.

All the way down she anticipated the tidal waves of snark and scorn and sarcasm and derision that Snape would be heaping on her, not only now, but for the entire second term. Especially on the long trip back to Liverpool.

And during that whole week of looming detention that was cluttering up her spotless record.

"Fuck 'em all. I should have let Snape kill 'im and Malfoy cover it up. Last time I go through official fucking channels." She muttered, darkly.

Hermione took a deep breath, pointed her wand at the door, and spoke Snape's password.

"Vader was framed."

The door opened and Hermione walked in.

In a moment she was in the air, six feet and three inches in the air, and being held so hard she could hardly breathe.

The last thing Hermione had expected was a giant hug, and she happily hugged Snape back.

"You are in a lot of fucking trouble, you crazy little witch. But I'm so glad you're still alive." He told her.

He hugged her again.

Hermione couldn't believe her luck.

This wasn't half bad.

She decided to push her luck.

"After we saved everybody in this school from that werewolf, what do we get? Punished. Fucking typical." Hermione griped

"I'm going to talk to Albus about the unreasonable punishments he levied against you and Miss Weasley. The problem is that what you and your mad friend did was brave, brilliant and amazing at the same time as being incredibly fucking stupid and dangerous. Taking a red-haired animagus with a rage problem who can transform herself into a lioness with you to fight a werewolf so that you can both be bitten is not what I would call brilliant strategy. I thought I'd trained you better than that, Granger. However, you conducted yourself exceptionally in the duel. That is the best wandless magic I have ever seen an undergraduate perform. The only person I know who was that good at wandless magic at your age was me. But, you're still a teenager, and you and Weasley both think you know everything. I imagine, though that this has taken the wind out of your sails."

"So I made one mistake? So fucking shoot me!"

"Don't get defensive with me. I'm on your side. Still, I think the two of you did this school and the Wizarding taxpayers a great service. I agree that you should be reprimanded, but not severely punished. And you could have at least gotten a simple thank you. Now, redeem yourself in my eyes, General Granger. What should you have done?"

"I suppose Ginny and I should have told you about our plan. Or, I should have just told you about it when Crich first started to blackmail me. Then you and I could have wound the whole thing up quietly. After that, I imagine Lord Malfoy, or somebody else in the Ministry, somebody in CAULDRON1, perhaps would have swept the whole thing under the rug."

"Very good. Next time, I, in my capacity as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and a CAULDRON agent, and your superior, want to take out an enemy operative, quickly and quietly, don't question my motives, and don't blag everything all out onto the open. You just let me do my job, and I, as your superior, will tell you what your job is. That goes double for the Voldemort operation. Are we understood, Granger?"

"We are, Snape."

"Don't worry about your perfect record. I'll talk to Albus over the holiday while you're at home with your parents. Don't look go glum, Granger. It's nearly Chrimble."

"There's the Yule Ball, first. I'll be going stag this year. As usual. I wouldn't even go, but The Weasleys are playing. I hate these fucking occasions. I can't go with you. And I wouldn't feel right about going without you. I mean, you can't take somebody you hardly know that you're casually shagging whose last name you aren't sure of to a formal occasion. Especially with your regular bloke just across the ballroom. It's in poor taste." Hermione complained.

"Oh? And who would this anonymous shagger be?" Snape asked, amusedly.

The truth was, Hermione hadn't been conducting any extracurricular activities lately, but she didn't want Snape to have the satisfaction of knowing hat.

"Some German bloke. Helmut Something-Or-Other. Some Gerry name. Goes to Durmstrang. I met him at Fred and George's shop. Mind, he only knows about ten words of English, but it's not talking I'm interested in." she blagged, casually.

"I see. Well, I think, for once, the Yule Ball might actually be quite interesting." Snape chuckled.

Hermione was immediately suspicious.

"You do? What do you know that I don't?"

"Plenty. Don't give me that look. Back to your room with you, it's almost time for dinner, and I have work to do."

Hermione went back to her room, got her dress out and hung it up on the chiffarobe, and looked for those beastly high heels that she hated.

"I loathe all this grammar school bullshit." She complained.

* * *

Meanwhile, at 12 Grimmauld Place, had Kreacher not been so quick to answer the door, Sirius' rather hesitant visitor would have already been gone.

"I know I shouldn't be here, but…"

The old elf's face brightened and he seized hold of Sibyl Trelawney's hand.

"No, no, please come in. Master will be happy to see you. Can Kreacher get you some tea? Pumpkin juice? A butterbeer? I hope you are still on the cart?" he chattered, brightly.

It was very unusual for Kreacher to be so cheery

"On the wagon, Treacher. Three months. Thanks to Judge Black."

Kreacher set Professor Trelawney up with a nice cup of tea, and ran to awaken Sirius from his nap.

"Wake up, Master Sirius! Wake up, quick! Miss Trelawney is here!"

"Here? Where here? You men right here?" Sirius asked as he leapt out of bed.

"In the parlour here!" Kreacher explained.

"But I'm not dressed! Where are the clean clothes? Does this match? It's so dark in here!"

Sirius panicked, and began running around the room in his underwear.

"Here now, Kreacher will has made things nice and bright. The clean clothes are in the wardrobe. Here's a shirt. And these trousers. And this waistcoat. And this jacket. Now, let Kreacher brush your hair. Sit still, Master. Very good. Master looks quite handsome. I will tell her that Master is coming. And then, Kreacher will go down to the pantry, and take some inventory. For a few hours."

Sirius knew exactly what the ageing house-elf was intimating.

He took another look at himself, in the mirror.

"Hope springs eternal, Kreacher." He said, smoothing out his beard.

The thing that always surprised Sibyl was that even after 12 years in Azkaban, Sirius was still-good looking. He wasn't the boy she'd fallen for in her fifth year at Hogwarts, a lifetime or three ago, but manhood looked good on Judge Sirius Black, in his Levi's and his shirt and his velvet waistcoat and corduroy blazer.

He still wore his hair long.

And his moustache.

Like he used to.

"Are you alright…Judge Black? I heard you came over poorly at the school, so I came to see you. I hope you don't mind."

When Sirius looked at Sibyl Trelawney, he saw past her ugly clothes and her thick glasses; he saw the bubbly, somewhat ditzy free-spirited barefoot hippie witch with whom he had fallen in love when he was fifteen.

She hadn't changed so much; she hadn't put on weight or turned into a haggard old bag; his beautiful Sibyl was still there, hiding under the clothes and mannerisms of an old gypsy hag in a cheap Saturday matinee.

"I'm fine, Sibyl. I was at the duel between Hermione Granger and Oliver Crich. She fought bravely and well, and gave Crich the death he deserved, but she quite literally splattered him all over the walls. I had a rather large breakfast, and it was too much." Sirius explained.

"No detah was too much for that miserable creature! I told Albus I didn't think he should hire Oliver on. You could see the evil that surrounded him. You could feel the deaths of all those poor young girls; they clung to him! Like an angry cloud of black and red. Blood and darknessa nad sorrow. Well, I could. Not that anybody ever listens to me. Now that I see you're alright, I suppose I'd better go."

"You just got here! Why don't you stay for awhile? You and I don't get to see enough of each other. I am your WAND sponsor, remember? We're supposed to spend more time together. You've got almost five months now, haven't you?"

Sirius sat down on the divan beside the Divinations professor and she hopped up and began fluttering around the room, sloshing tea out of her cup.

"I was sober for 14 years, S-Judge Black. And then that cow Umbridge fired me. Fired me! I started teaching at Hogwarts as soon as my apprenticeship was finished; I wasn't ever twenty-one years old! Hogwarts was my home. I didn't know where to go. What to do. I had to move back in with me parents while I was looking for a flat. Me Mum said I told you so. It was terrible, Sir- Judge Black. Terrible."

"You could have come and stayed with me. I wish I would have known you were having such difficulty." Sirius protested.

"You were busy with Harry, and the war, and poor Albus in exile. I know I had no excuse to start drinking again, but it was all too much! Fourteen years of sobriety and now I'm down to three lousy months!"

Sibyl collapsed back onto the divan, and Sirius refilled her teacup.

"Four lousy months. Nearly five lousy months. And that's much better than no months at all. 14 years of sobriety show s you that you can do it."

Impulsively, Sirius took her hand.

Sibyl spilled tea all over herself, her cup went flying, and she pulled her hand back like his hands were on fire.

"Judge Black, please!"

"Will you stop bleedin' callin' me Judge Black! I imagine you don't call your old friend Severus "Professor Snape". Did you forget all about me when I went to Azkaban? Am I a so much of a stranger to you now?"Sirius asked, despairingly.

It was a cinch that Snape had been at her, again, while he was gone.

She started fluttering around the room, again.

"Severus and I are just friends. With, erm, benefits, occasionally, but still just friends. That is all we ever were. Of course I didn't forget you! I could have married, you know. I had a lot of offers, in the past. I didn't want to. Get married. Get involved. No one ever listens to me, even when I'm right. I made two important prophecies in my life, and both times, nothing could be done about them. I couldn't even save you. Everyone treated me like I was a dingy old bat and I decided I might as well be one."

"You are not a dingy old bat. And the best part about all of my misfortunes, and yours is that they're over. I'm out of jail, and my name is clear. I'm a judge now, a Justice in the High Court. We've got Voldemort on the run; the tide has turned and we're winning this war. You and I are lucky. We're both still alive, and in one piece. And we're not so old, Sibyl. Neither of us is even 40."

"Don't talk to me like that, Sirius! I don't know why I bothered to come here. I'm not the girl you used to know, I'm an old fraud. And you're a High Court Justice, now. You can't be seen with me. "

"You are not an old fraud, either. Several of your prophecies have come true. And if you were an old fraud, would Albus have hired you back on? I know he's consulted you a few times, since before and after the Mutiny. Would he do that, if he thought you were a fraud? You talk like you're a Muggle with a deck of tarot cards, or a squib. Give yourself some credit, Sibyl. As for me, I may be a High Court Justice, but I earned it, spending 12 years in Azkaban. So we've changed? Not so much though, have we? Really?"

Sirius had been following her, and he managed to get hold of her hand, again.

This time, Sibyl didn't pull it away.

"And you still love me?" she asked, sounding both hopeful and sceptical.

"Of course I still love you! You can't just quit loving somebody, can you? And you're still beautiful, Sibyl. Under those thick glasses and those ugly clothes you wear, I can see you're still beautiful. And even if you weren't, if you had become the tatty old crone you pretend to be, I wouldn't care a monkey's."

"Sirius, don't talk to me that way!"

"Why shouldn't I? You're not an old woman. I'm not an old man. Like I said, we're still in our thirties. We've got another hundred odd years to live. I'm your sponsor. Let me help you stay sober. I can think of something better to do than get pissed…"

"Sirius, I told you not to talk like that to me! I'm not like I was when we were in school. I've stopped screwing around with men. Given it up."

"Have you?"

"Don't look so amused! People change. You get older, you realise that…stop laughing at me!"

"I'm sorry, Sibyl. But I'm not convinced."

"Okay, you win! Since I stopped going to pubs, I haven't found another place to go looking for…companionship. So, I've given it up. What about you? You were in jail for 12 years! That must have…taken something away from you."

She was fishing for information she really didn't want to know about.

"Not me. I was reputedly a multiple murderer and a Death Eater. Then I became a jailhouse lawyer, and then after I got my real degree, with Albus' help, I was the king of Azkaban. All I lost was 12 good years. But it's like riding a broom. You never forget how. And I've been practising. Take off your glasses, Sibyl."

"No!"

"Why? You can't be the dried up old hag you pretend to be! You've just admitted as much to me! And you have 20-20 vision. I'm not in jail anymore. And you can still become as great a prophetess as your grandmother. You're the woman who predicted the rise of Harry Potter. Take off your glasses, Sibyl."

Professor Trelawney took off her glasses.

"Is that what you really look like, Sirius? You're still so handsome." She said.

"I'm going to kiss you now, Sibyl."

"Don't! I'm telling you, I don't want to! I mean, I do want to, but I can't bear losing you a second time! What if you get killed? What it's just too little and too late?"

"It's not too little and too late. And you could get killed, too. I rather have you, again, even if it's just for a little while, than die without having tried. Besides, I don't think either of us is going to get killed."

Sibyl fluttered away again, muttering that she didn't know, and she wasn't sure, and she had to consult the cards, and do some scrying, throw the runes, consult her tea leaves.

Sirius decided that extreme methods were appropriate.

"You don't need all that to use your gift. I can see I'll have to take drastic measures."

He took off his jacket, and tossed it casually onto a chair.

Then he unbuttoned his waistcoat, tossed it in her general direction, and slowly started unbuttoning his shirt.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm taking my clothes off. I don't want you hanging around in pubs looking for action. It's too much of a temptation."

On the other hand, had their reunion been doomed, Professor Trelawney expected she would have had some kind of feeling of impending doom, some sense of foreboding.

She wasn't feeling anything of the kind.

Especially watching Sirius undress.

"I don't suppose it would harm anything, if I just touched you a little." She ventured, reaching towards him.

Sirius pulled her into his arms.

"It wouldn't hurt anything if you touched me a lot. I am going to kiss you now, Sibyl. And then I'm going to take off that hideous scarf and that ugly shawl and those tacky beads and that awful sash and that boxy blouse and that frumpy skirt and you are going to screw around with me. Right here, on this divan. Right fucking now."

"Siruis, I've been waiting for this since 1982." Sibyl confessed.

"So have I." Sirius replied, ardently.

* * *

"How could you keep this body and that face under those rags? You don't look a damn bit different than when you were seventeen."

She was tall, almost as tall as he was, with a long, slender figure. Lovely long legs and high, firm breasts the size of ripe oranges. Beautiful Sibyl, anybody's lover, but only his girl.

"It didn't do me much good, then, did it? I didn't feel like everybody was taking advantage of me, then. I still don't. I really did think of it as free love, a kind of love. Since then, I showed it to a few wizards. Not as many as in the past. I didn't want to catch a man. I wanted you. I always loved you, Sirius. Of course I suppose you don't just stop loving someone, once you've started. "

"Well you've got me, witch. And I always loved you, too."

"You don't look much different, yourself, Sirius. Considering what we've been through, the years have been kind. It's either that or, as the Muggles say, good genes."

He still had the stature and the long, lean, well-muscled body of a Greek God. Played Quidditch, an athlete, a Quidditch hero. Curly hair and his broad shoulders and narrow hips. Like Apollo. Like the Sun.

She laughed.

"Do you have a date for the Yule Ball tomorrow?" Sirius asked, casually.

"Sirius, you can't! What will people think?"

"They'll think it's sweet that us two grammar school sweethearts have rekindled our romance after so many years of adversity. You're a professor with tenure at one of the finest Wizarding Schools in the world and I am a High Court justice. What should they think?"

"I think I know exactly what I'll wear. It still fits me. All of my old clothes still fit me. And they're all coming back into style. I think I'll start wearing them again. I even know where my purple-tinted granny glasses are."

Sirius was just drifting off to sleep with his woman in his rams when she jumped off the divan, and began fluttering about the room, again, gathering up her scattered clothes, throwing them on any which way.

"Where are you going? Sibyl?"

"Papers! I have papers to grade for the seventh years! I have to finish! I'll go and finish me papers and then I'll come back!"

She fluttered out the door, then came back in, kissed him, and fluttered out gain.

"I'll be back in a few hours! Ta-ra! Now, I must bring a few things to brighten that frightful place up. Terrible aura. So musty and negative and repressed. And it smells like whatever Kreacher uses to clean with. Some candles. Maybe an oil burner and some incense. I have an extra Chinese screen, something. I don't know. His place is so gloomy…" he heard her saying in her sing-song way, as she fluttered down the street.

"Same old Sybil." Sirius mused.

He decided to go back to sleep.

If she was indeed the same old Sibyl, and "that part of her life" had been over for nearly a year, he was going to need all his strength for when she returned.

* * *

"…so, you see, Ginny, I'm sure I'll get over it, but right now, after having seen what happened earlier today, we'll just have to lay off a bit. For awhile."

The only other person in the common room was Lavender Brown, and she was a good distance away.

"I understand, Harry. You take all the time you need. I've got Quidditch groupies from here to eternity. Among my other options." Ginny replied.

Harry wasn't sure that was the way he wanted it, but he really couldn't expect her to take a vow of chastity while he sorted out his hang-ups.

"I just need one favour from you. I'm a bit shaken up, after today. That's the first time since the Chamber of Secrets that I really felt like I was going to die. Going up against a Death Eater is one thing. Going up against a psycho sex case werewolf Death Eater who had you on his list of people to rape, murder and eat alive, and not necessarily in that order, is another. I don't want to sleep alone, tonight." Ginny confessed.

Harry leaned back in his chair, basking in a sudden rush of masculine bravado.

"I understand. You close the curtains and put up the Shielding Spell, and I'll sneak in with me Invisibility Cloak. The usual password?" Harry asked.

"Yeah." Ginny replied.

"Well, then, I guess I'll go get ready for bed."

Ginny sat alone at the table for awhile, shaking her head in wonderment.

"I told you it would work!" Lavender called.

"We'll see! So far, so good." Ginny replied.

Harry shoved his invisibility cloak under the bed and something rolled out as she got under the covers and Shielded and Silenced the bed-curtains.

It was a half-empty bottle of Hell's Horntail.

Harry felt a terrible pang of pain stab through his guts, an eviscerating pain and a great and terrible sense of loss. It was the first time he'd held a bottle in his hand since the beginning of the term, and he felt no sense of joy or accomplishment as he shoved it back under the bed.

Only the bitter, regretful pain a different young man might have associated with the loss of the first girl he ever really loved.

"What are you sighin' about like a lovesick virgin? A nasty old half-drunk bottle of cheap rotgut firewhiskey?" Ginny asked.

"Yeah." Harry admitted.

"Poor Harry. I hope it gets easier for you when you've been sober longer."

"I hope it does, too. Sometimes I really just feel like I wish I was dead, and out of this terrible dull aching pain." Harry confessed.

She hugged him, and Harry realised she was naked.

Pain was chased from his mind by lust.

"Why are you naked?" he blustered.

"I don't wear clothes to bed. Ever. You know that. Neither do you. Why are you wearing a tee shirt and y-fronts? I didn't know you owned a pair of y-fronts."

Harry was infamous for sleeping au naturel. He'd been doing so since he was about 13, when he became convinced that both pyjamas and underwear were decidedly square and uncool.

It was a ritual for first years of both sexes to get used to the sight of the famous Harry Potter strolling through the Common Room, naked, fag in mouth, heading for the showers with his clothes under his arm, first thing in the morning.

"I stole them from Ron. They're clean."

"For fuck's sake, Harry, you can't bring me brother's underwear to me bed! Take them off. And take off that stupid tee shirt, too."

Harry took off the tee shirt, which was also Ron's, and shoved it and the y-fronts under the bed.

"That's better. Good night, Harry."

"Uh, right. Good night, Ginny."

Harry had expected her to at least try something, but she didn't.

All she did was roll over and go to sleep.

_Well, you did tell her you was freaked out and you wanted to lay off for awhile, didn't you?_

Time slowly passed. Harry couldn't sleep.

He reached under the bed for his fags, and smoked one. Then he tried going to sleep, again.

He moved over a little so that his leg wasn't up against Ginny's leg. Then, he started shivering like a bastard.

Goddamn Lavender Brown and her goddamn stupid ideas about fresh fucking air. Who needed fucking fresh air in fucking December? Even he closed the window at night before he went to bed after he had his smoke.

Harry pulled over on the blankets.

"Oi, wot gives?" Ginny complained, and pulled them back.

"I'm freezing over 'ere! Does she have the fucking window all the way the fuck open?" Harry protested.

"What the fuck are you doing all the way over there at the end of the bed? I'm cold too. Get your arse over here."

They ended up back to back, tucked up under the covers, and quite a bit of Ginny's extremely long red hair ended up draped over Harry, as usual.

He was warm, but he still couldn't sleep.

The image of the lioness batting around a severed head became more and more fuzzy, lying there with Ginny's hair draped over his chest and her nestling her hot little arse up against him.

Crich was a werewolf, and a psycho sex case. He deserved what he got, didn't he?

And Ginny was a hero. She helped save all their lives. Crich might have killed everyone in the room in order to escape.

And it was instinct, when you were in animal form, you had to have some animal instinct, and cats were always worrying and batting around the things they killed, weren't they?

Ginny rolled over put her arm around him and whispered in his ear.

"Ha-ry? Oh Ha-ry? Changed your mind, yet?"

She started rubbing up against his leg.

Harry realised he'd been had.

He rolled over to face her.

"You planned this, didn't you? You and your Burning Bush!"

"Honestly, I 'ad a lot of 'elp from Parvati and Lavender. But yeah, I planned this. I didn't want you to start bein' afraid of me. I figured I couldn't get you in the habit of bein' afraid of me? I eased yer into it, didn't I?" Ginny confessed.

"I'm gonna ease something into you, you horny, evil little witch." Harry replied.

"I wish you would. It's drivin' me mad, you just lyin' here like you don't know me."

"You'll never let me be a decent bloke, will you?"

"If you was a decent bloke, I wouldn't want you. I don't like decent blokes. No fun."

Harry made a good show of proving he was a lot of fun, and then Ginny fell contentedly asleep.

She got to fight a duel, helped send another Death Eater to smoke and toast in hell, and got the arse shagged off her.

It had been a good day.

_Author's Note: CAULDRON is the Wizarding equivalent of MI-5, which is sort of like the U.S. FBI. Apparantly, Snape is a real live secret agent. It is an acronym for Central Advanced Unit for Limiting Dark Rites and Orders Nationwide. You will be hearing more about them, later._


	11. Deserted Cities of a Dark Wizard’s Heart

**Chapter 11: Deserted Cities of a Dark Wizard's Heart**

_Author's Note: Sorry it's been so long, but I had to take a Bar Exam, then I went on tour & played a few gigs in Canada. _

The day of Crich's demise had been a good day for Severus Snape, as well.

It was a pleasure to watch that son of a bitch die, and die hard, and at the hands of not only a woman, but a Muggle-born, and Snape's protégé.

But, as he sat alone by the hearth in his parlour, the feeling faded, and the cold of the December night began to creep through the walls, and into his body.

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but it wasn't as filling as he hoped it would be.

Snape threw a few more logs onto the fire, even though he knew it wasn't the cold that was chilling him to zero in the very marrow of his bones.

It was a terrible chill, one that made him feel old, and scarred and broken.

He didn't dare think of Lily. When he got into one of these moods, if he thought of Lily he'd kill himself, he'd break a thick glass beaker , cut his chest open with a chunk of the ragged broken glass, tear out his own heart and watch it stop beating as he died.

He did allow himself to think of Faith.

Her name, inked on his left breast, had been his first tattoo.

Faith Snape was his Uncle Angus' daughter. Uncle Angus hadn't fared much better in his life than his brother did; he was also a chronically unemployable drunk and a widower, and he too lived on the Spinner's End estate.

But he took better care of Faith than Tobias and Eileen did of their son. He was kind to her, and he never struck her, and he made sure she had enough to eat, clothes to wear, as well as love and the security of a good, if rather flawed, father.

Cousin Faith wasn't a beautiful girl, but she looked it when she smiled, and she seemed to always be smiling. She was rather short and square and stocky, a real Snape, with a halo of ginger hair and freckles .She had an outgoing personality and a sunny disposition. She was very strong and hale and hearty; a flower in the dustbin. Faith looked like a displaced country girl on the ramshackle council estate where she was born and bred.

She was seven years older than her pale, scrawny, undernourished and utterly bereft cousin Severus. Since Aunt Eileen and Uncle Tobias weren't inclined to do so, she took it upon herself to look after him, and teach him all about the world.

Faith taught him how to use the loo when he was just a baby, and how to read, and write from her schoolbooks when he got older. From her he also learned how to scavenge, scrap, smoke, and swear.

She showed him how to live and thrive in the tough, hardscrabble world they lived in; she was more an older sister than a cousin, a better little Mum to him than his own.

Despite her origins, Faith made a good showing for herself. She became a psychiatric social worker and found her vocation with the worst kind of drunks and junkies, trying to help them get clean and get their lives together.

She wasstudying for a PH.D and trying to get Snape into a treatment programme when she died, in 1976. Uncle Angus always said it wasn't his fault, she was always going after the strays and lost-souls of the world, but she was looking for a way to get into Knockturn Alley, to find him in a dive pub where he pushed product for Tom Riddle when she met the Werewolf Murderer in an equally seedy part of Muggle London.

They found what was left of her body in a dustbin on Wapping Wharf about a week after she disappeared. The Muggle police estimated that she'd only been dead a few hours, and that her abductor had kept her for a week, torturing, raping and abusing her in unspeakable ways.

Snape didn't think Uncle Angus could bear it; he drank two bottles of Hell's Horntail and shot himself full of shockingly pure jacks before going to the morgue to identify what was left of his cousin.

Faith had taken care of him when he was a child, and she was still trying to look after him when she died. And he couldn't even be sober when he went to identify or her body. He passed out at the gravesite and his Da and Uncle Angus had to climb in and drag him out of the open grave.

For eighteen years Oliver Crich had walked and talked and lived and breathed after the Aurors and the Muggle rozzers both bungled the case. Eighteen years in which the gods only knew how many Faiths he had left in how many dustbins.

Seeing to it that Crich died in a painful, brutal, prolonged and humiliating fashion would not bring Faith back.

Or any of the other women Crich murdered.

It was, however, all that he could do.

Snape realised he must have been brooding longer than he thought he was, because the fire was dying.

He let it die, and sat in his chair, alone in the cold and the dark, hoping that he could be allowed the relief of tears.

They came, and chased away the terrible chill, and Snape sat in the cold blackness and cried, for as long as he could.

It was a wonderful relief to be able to cry, to choke the emotion out of his crippled old soul, but he wasn't able to muster the emotion for long.

And when he could not cry any longer, the darkness and the chill overtook him, and seeped into the marrow of his bones, burning him with the cold blue flame in all his wounds that had never quite healed.

Though he sat silently in the chair, somewhere in the deserted cities of his stony heart, Snape's soul came awake in blood and screams.

He put his head in his hands, pressing his fingers against his scalp harder and harder as he sought to ride out the tidal wave of torment that washed over him, drowning him in his own blood, cold, black, and stinking.

* * *

High in Gryffindor Tower, Harry Potter awoke to the sounds of terrible, almost inhuman screams.

"Wake up, Ginny! Wake up? Can't you hear that?"

"Hear wot, Harry? You must be havin' another nightmare."

"No. I'm wide awake and I can still hear it. Terrible screams. Howls of agony. Like something is being tortured to death. Or someone. It's horrible! Can't you hear it?"

Harry released the spells on the bedcurtains and leapt out of bed.

He put on Ron's tee shirt and y-fronts and his own glasses.

"Why can I hear it and you can't? Am I seeing through Voldemort's eyes, again? Is he murdering somebody? I'd better go wake the Headmaster." He said.

Ginny stuck her head out of the curtains.

"But you didn't hear Voldemort's victims screaming. You saw what he was doing through his own eyes."

Then Harry went a whiter shade of pale, the way Crich had earlier that day,

"I can see them. He can't shut me all the way out, because we have the same blood. Some kind of link…something in the blood.…I have to go." He babbled.

Ginny had some idea what he was talking about and wondered of she could go and wake Hermione.

In the end, though, she closed the curtains and lay back down.

This was a family affair.

* * *

Harry nearly killed himself, dashing through the dark castle with only his illuminated wand to guide him.

He didn't bother knocking on the door, he didn't bother with the password, he put his shoulder to it and burst through the heavy oak door.

Everything was cold, and dark.

And silent.

Harry pointed his wand at the chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

"_Lumos_!"

He expected to see his father lying on the ground in a pool of blood, but he was just sitting by the extinguished fire, in his chair, alive and in one piece.

He seemed utterly exhausted as he looked at Harry, then he looked back at the fire.

He pointed a bony finger at it.

"Lumos."

The fire roared to life, and Harry pulled up a chair beside it.

"I heard you screaming. In me mind." He explained.

"Quite a shock, isn't it, Potter? How do you think I know when you're in trouble? I'm not psychic."

The usual snap was not in Snape's voice.

"D'you wnat me to go back to bed, then?' Harry asked, awkwardly.

"No. I imagine I never told you about your cousin, Faith." he said.

"No." Harry replied.

"Put another log on the fire, and I will."


	12. The Biggest Balls of Them All

**Chapter 12: The Biggest Balls of Them All**

Harry couldn't recall ever being quite this bored at a Yule Ball since his first; but then he realised that was because he had been under the positive effects of many elements of the pharmacopoeia at the past two events.

Especially the last one. When you've been drinking Hell's Horntail and Coke for three days straight and you've just had a snort of high- grade smack and a hit of home-made acid (thank you Half-Blood Prince), anything is entertaining.

"Was it last year that I got naked at the Yule Ball and ran around screaming that I had found the secret to the universe and it was more cowbell?" Harry asked Ginny and Hermione.

"I thought that was fifth year." Ginny replied.

"No, it was last year. Fifth year was when he was so drunk that he went over to the Faculty table and told Snape he was a fucking wicked old screw." Hermione reminded her.

"Oh yeah! I've never seen Snape so fuckin' angry! He called Harry a spoiled little cocksucker, and he jumped over that table, picked him up and carried him out of the ballroom. You remember that, don't you, Harry?" Ginny asked.

"Yeah. I had detention for about a century. What happened last year? I can't remember anything after getting up on the refreshment table." Harry asked.

"Dumbledore told you how fascinating he thought your insights were, and talked you down from the refreshment table. He managed to convince you to put your clothes back on, and I think he took you to the infirmary or back to your bed, because he came back without you." Ginny told him.

"Happy days, those. Well, if nothing interesting happens I'll be forced to do some old fashioned Mr. Crowley magick."

"Harry! You shouldn't even be thinking about that wizard, let alone saying his name, or reading his works! It's dangerous even for Muggles!" Hermione chastised him.

"Relax, Hermione. I'm not a Thelemite. I didn't even read this spell in a book of magic. Even a Muggle could do it."

"What's that?" Ginny asked.

"Well, if you really want to clear out a party, you wait until everything is very quiet and still, then you go out into the middle of the room. When you are sure everyone is looking at you, you take a shit on the floor."

Ginny laughed, and so did Hermione.

"Some magic! No wonder Muggles go in for it."

"I'll bet it works." Ginny chuckled.

"In the punchbowl. That would be much better." Harry mused.

If there was one thing Harry couldn't stand it was the schmaltzy Lawrence Welk checkerboard square half-assed bullshit music they played at these kinds of affairs.

It was like the shit you heard in elevators.

"I'm going to go get some air." Hermione announced.

She left her high heels under the table, and headed for the door.

"I'll get us some more punch, before it gets spiked." Ginny decided

Harry kept looking at the clock, and looking at the clock until it seemed to him that time had actually stopped; Ron's band would never arrive and he would be sitting there all night in his dress robes that he had grown out of, trying to find a comfortable position in which his balls were not being shoved up around his ears.

"Do you want to dance?" he finally asked Ginny.

"I can't dance to this ballroom stuff." She replied.

She looked even more bored than he did.

"Me neither. Are you wearing knickers under that gown?"

"I thought you'd never ask. Let's go outside and get some…air."

They passed Hermione, who was also sitting at their table on her way back in as they went out.

"Is it time for Ron to be on yet?" she asked Ginny.

"Not yet."

Hermione walked slowly back to the table she was sharing with Ginny and Harry.

She was the fifth wheel, again.

The odd sock.

The spare prick at the wedding.

No date.

As usual.

Professor Lupin had a date. He was there with his wife. If I had picked him, she thought, I'd be married. And pregnant.

Never mind.

Sirius had a date.

Not surprising.

He was sitting at the faculty table with this tall, blond witch in a gauzy, flowing blue dress. She was definitely the hippie type, and not second-generation, either, but she was quite pretty.

Nobody seemed to know who she was, or why Sirius was sitting at the faculty table. Maybe since he wasn't a student.

Hermione looked towards the door, went and got another glass of punch and then sat down again.

She looked back over at the Faculty table.

Snape doesn't have a date. Snape never has a date. The only dates he gets come knocking on the bedroom door in the middle of the night. Nobody has any respect for him.

Just me. Though I don't know why. He's rude, and snarky, and unpleasant. A real arsehole. Of course I think it's funny when he's being that way to other people. Don't like it when he's an arsehole to me. Too bad for me. Hard cheese, old chap.

Hermione kept staring at Snape until he realised she was looking at him.

He smiled, sardonically, and raised his glass.

Hermione raised hers, in turn.

Harry and Ginny came back in.

Their clothes were perfectly arranged.

She had taught them that spell.

No sooner did they sit down than did Sirius' date come over to the table.

Harry was far less obvious about checking out her legs and looking down the front of her shirt at her tits than the other boys his age; he actually did it in a fairly sly and classy way, if you can be an absolute randy pig in a sly and classy sort of way.

She sat down in the empty chair between Harry and Hermione and pushed her granny glasses up her nose in a very familiar gesture.

Hermione swallowed a laugh.

"I just wanted to take the time to tell you three in person how much I enjoyed your group paper on the origins and significance of the runic script. I know you students hadn't been taking my class seriously, so when Albus hired me back on I tried to change the curriculum a little and it seems to have worked. It's been a pleasure having you this semester in Advanced Divination. Firenze and I have put our heads together, and we'll be co-teaching a new class next semester for sixth years and seventh years only in Prophecy and Transcendental States. I especially thought you three might like to sign up. Harry, certain forms of focused meditation are very good for combating one's cravings to fall off the wagon. I think it might benefit you Miss Weasley, because its' also a very good way to control and channel aggression. Or stress, Hermione. I can't promise you that you'll discover a gift for prophecy, or have some kind of great spiritual revelation, but you may find some inner peace. Which is in short supply, with this war going on."

Harry was completely gobsmacked.

"I think I'd like to sign up, Professor Trelawney. That sounds…very interesting."

Hermione responded.

She wasn't lying.

"Good. I suppose I'll see you next semester. Have a Happy Christmas. Not even a glass of punch, Harry."

"No. Not even a glass of punch. And, ah, I'll be signing up for that class." Harry finally said.

"Wonderful!" Professor Trelawney exclaimed.

She wished them all a Happy Christmas, again, stopped to talk to Lavender and Parvati, then fluttered back to the faculty table.

"Holy shit!" Harry exclaimed.

It turned out that Sirius was right. Professor Trelawney was still quite a beautiful witch when she wasn't buried under several layers of boxy blues, frumpy shirts, hideous scarves, ugly shawls, cheap clanking jewellery and those horrid big-eyes horn rimmed glasses.

Ginny laughed at him.

"Didn't you know it was her? I knew it was her. The look on your face! The looks on all you're faces! Her class is going to be stuffed with you lot, puttin' your hands in your pockets all term!"

"Maybe I want to learn to meditate." Harry protested.

"Yeah, meditate on this. Way-hey-hey-hey!" Ginny countered, making the expected obscene gesture with her forearm.

Hermione watched the Divinations professor and Sirius Black dancing.

They had been an item when they were Hogwarts students, and from the looks on their faces as they danced together, it looked like they were picking up where they had left off before he went to prison and she fell into the bottom of a bottle of sherry.

Hermione looked at the clock.

Another hour to go.

"I suppose I should have invited the Gerry from Durmstrang." Hermione mused.

"Who?" Harry asked.

Then she remembered that Helmut the Gerry from Durmstrang was a completely fictional person.

"Nobody. Never mind. I must be losing me mind." Hermione muttered.

"The wicked old screw. He shouldn't treat you like this. Nobody else would put up with his snarky old arse." Harry replied.

"True." Hermione agreed

She looked over at the Faculty table, and Snape in his black and green snakeskin dress robes.

This time, he pretended not to notice.

"Arsehole." she muttered, under her breath.

* * *

"I think I'll go have another glass of punch." Snape said.

"Severus, you must have drank half the punchbowl yourself, and you've been to the loo four times. Now are you going to go over there, or shall I? Either way, this ends tonight. Remember what we discussed?" Dumbledore reminded him.

"Can't I just put an announcement in the Daily Prophet, or something. You know how I hate public displays."

"Severus, you can't hide in that dungeon, forever. After the war is over you'll be one of the biggest heroes in the Wizarding World. You might as well get used to public scrutiny. Unless, of course, you're ashamed…"

Good old Dumbledore, he knew how to push his son by law and magical bond's buttons.

"I am not fucking well ashamed!" Snape snapped.

"Then prove it." Dumbledore finished.

"Fine. I will!"

Snape had marched halfway across the room when he realised the old man had him over a barrel, again.

He turned his head.

Now they were all watching him, like this was some kind of Muggle reality show on telly.

And then, quite suddenly, he was standing by Hermione's table.

"Potter, you look bored. So do you, Weasley." He observed.

"I am bored. _Professor._" Harry answered.

He could do snarky just as well as the old man.

"Have no fear. Something interesting is about to happen. Can you dance, Granger?" Snape replied.

"Holy fuckin' shit!" Harry exclaimed.

"Sharrup, you toerag!" Ginny chastised him.

Hermione just stared at Snape for a few moments.

"What? Are you off yer bleedin' nut?" Hermione squawked, completely unmanned.

"No. I'm just tired of sneaking about when I've nothing to sneak about over. And I don't want another situation like the one Crich got us into. It almost got you killed. I can't have that. So, can you dance?"

"You're having me on. You must be! What about your job? Your reputation? Our privacy?"

"I'm not having you on. And why would I lose me job. For one thing, I have tenure. Fore another, you're 18. As for our privacy, I'm not going to drag you out onto the dance floor, you're your dress over your head and roger you in front of the whole school while Potter takes tickets and charges admission! Everybody in the whole school thinks they know, anyway. It's a big joke. Potter, tell her about the picture somebody drew on the wall of the men's room in the library. The one that keeps coming back no matter how may times I wipe it away." Snape insisted.

"You mean the one with you and Hermione having it off while she mixes potions in your lab, or the one where she's giving you head under the desk while you grade papers?" Harry asked.

"Did you have to be so graphic, you little shit?" Snape asked.

"One more word, Harry, and I'll hex your dick into a stack of pennies. You'll need a pair of tweezers to have a piss." Hermione threatened.

"I didn't draw 'em!" Harry protested, trying not to laugh.

She looked at Harry and Ginny. They were both looking at her, expectantly.

Then she looked over at the Faculty table.

All the professors were looking at her and Snape, some of them craning their necks to see what was going on, and Dumbledore was actually standing up to get a better view.

"Say "Yes", Hermione, dear!" Professor McGonagall suggested, loudly.

"You won't regret it!" Professor Trelawney advised, holding up her hand, which was entwined with Sirius'.

Hermione looked back at Snape.

She could see beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

"Come on, Granger, fucking do something! All of these rotten little bastards are staring at me and laughing!" Snape reminded her.

"Oh, fuck it! I'm a lousy dancer. I can't dance for shit. Can you?" Hermione replied.

"Not really. I've got two left feet. But this lot aren't exactly champion ballroom dancers. Let's have a bash at it." Snape replied.

Hermione slipped her feet back into her uncomfortable shoes.

"Why not?" she said.

He had to half-carry her to the dance floor because Hermione couldn't walk very well in high heels. It wasn't much of a dance, either because neither of them could dance.

They just sort of hung onto one another and swayed in time to the bad music as Snape tried not to step on Hermione's feet and she tried not to fall off of her high heels.

"You're right. Everyone is staring at us. Just like when I came to the ball with Viktor. That was the night. Some present for my Chrimble. Well, it wasn't so bad. But I did feel let down." Hermione recalled.

"This is the first time I ever danced with a witch at one of these wretched affairs." Snape confessed.

"My feet are killing me."

"Then take your shoes off."

Hermione kicked off her shoes, and they danced a little while longer.

A couple bumped into them.

"Sorry. Neither of us knows how to do this, either. But if you was going to, I figured, what the hell?" Harry explained.

"Lovely. I'm so proud of you. Dance yourself off me foot, Potter!" Snape advised.

"Oh. Sorry."

The song ended, and Harry and Ginny went back to their table, but not before Harry could get a "Good on you, Snape." in.

"Why don't you come and sit with me at the Faculty Table, Hermione?" Snape asked.

"I'd love to, Severus."

You could have heard a pin drop in the room as Hermione and the Potions Master went to get some punch, and then she sat with him at the Faculty Table.

The Professor Trelawney and Judge Black romance would have been the biggest surprise of the evening had that not just happened.

"Hermione thinks you're going to fire me, Albus." Snape told him.

"Quite the contrary, Severus. If you didn't make an honest woman out of Miss Granger after the Crich debacle, then I was going to fire you."

That would have been the biggest shock of the evening had not The Weasleys been such a great band.

Ron considered it a great complement when Snape, who had studied with the Seven Guitar Wizards gave him a positive comment on his performance.

"You're a rotten student, Weasley, but you're a great drummer. Get some kind of recording together and I may pass it on to me mates in the music business."

So he said, before leaving with Hermione Granger on his arm.

As they left, The Weasleys could not help playing the appropriate AC/DC song.

Snape made his exit in a chorus of "But he's got the biggest balls of them all!"'

"Do you think he'll marry her, Albus?" Professor McGonagall asked.

"Minerva, the question is do you think Hermione would want to marry anyone?" Dumbledore replied.

"Well, I can't think of anyone else she'd even think about marrying."

Her hope for more grandchildren, and Albus', sprung eternal.


	13. The Snape Family Christmas Special

**Chapter Thirteen : The Snape Family Christmas Special**

Christmas usually put Snape in a rotten mood, and this morning was no exception.

For one thing he hadn't slept at all the night before; he spent the whole night walking the halls, brooding and smoking.

He was deeply troubled by the events of the past few days; they had revealed large, insulting chinks in the ironclad armour of his foolproof plan to bring down Voldemort. He had waited through the long hours until eight, when he knew that Albus would be in his office.

Dumbledore was cheerily hanging Christmas decorations, and happily whistling _Jingle Bells._

"Good morning, Mr. Scrooge! I see you're in your usual Happy Christmas mood." Dumbledore joked.

"I've been thinking over this whole Crich affair, and there are serious problems with the plan, Albus." Snape began.

"I wouldn't call them serious problems, Severus. Still, our young Order members are going to have to get a lot better at following plans, directives and instructions if The Plan is going to succeed. Hermione and Ginny have to be made to realise they can't just go and do whatever they wish, just because they think it might work."

"Precisely. Not to mention that Potter's skills are rusty and Ronald Weasley's are nonexistent. For all their macho posturing, they just sat there and let the women do all the work. All those boys are good at is bluffing and chasing bints. Weasley can't drum his way out of battle and Voldemort is not going to be impressed by the size of Harry's plonker. Potter's not his type. "

"Don't worry, my boy! When you come back from visiting with your family, we'll have to devise an exercise for all of them. I might have something in mind. Now, try to cheer up. You've proclaimed your love for Hermione to all the world and you're going to spend your first Christmas with your son since he was a baby."

"I am?"

"You are. He's been packed all morning, dragging Hedwig and his trunk all around the school looking for you. Now, I'll see you on Christmas Day as usual. Go find Harry."

Dumbledore went back to orchestrating his decorations with his wand, and humming, so Snape knew the meeting was over.

Snape opened the door to the office and found Harry outside, smoking and pacing, trying to look casual.

"Snape, are you going somewhere for the holiday?"

"To visit your grandparents. Why, Potter?"

"Do they know about me?

"Of course they know about you! They're your family, Potter. They've kept schtum all these years, just the way I have. I was planning on inviting you to come along with me, but I see you have your trunk packed and you and Hedwig seem anxious as I am to get the fuck out of here."

"You don't know the half of it! Are you packed? Can I help? When do we leave?"

"Not yet. Why are you so anxious to go, Potter?"

Harry lit up, again.

"Well, it's personal."

"Personal?"

"Let's just say it would be a really good idea for me not to be in the building when Bill comes to get Ginny and Ron to take them home for Christmas." Harry replied.

Snape's eyebrow shot up to the rafters.

"Pictures or pensieve?"

"Both. Goddamn Draco Malfoy. With friends like him, who needs enemies?"

Snape couldn't help it, he started to laugh.

Harry began to laugh, too.

It struck Harry that these months getting to know his wicked old screw of a father were the only happy family memories he ever had.

It made him wonder if Snape had any, considering his childhood, and the grandparents Harry was both wary of and excited to be meeting.

"So, how do you arrange your holidays?"

"We'll be at home until Christmas morning, then we come back here for Christmas dinner . Then their lot goes home and I stay."

"Who?"

"All of 'em. The whole family. None of them can cook a proper dinner. So Albus lets them eat here. And then we're all together. My dysfunctional, fucked up natural family and Albus and Minerva, my dysfunctional, fucked up foster family

"Do you have any happy memories of your childhood, Snape?" Harry asked.

Snape blew a doubtful smoke ring at Harry.

"Where did that come from? Have you been watching those wretched uplifting Scrooge movies?"

"Yes, but that's not why. I got a present from Dudley and a rather nice card from Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. They were really genuinely worried about me."

Snape sighed, resignedly.

"My parents were big fans of Monty Python. They watched it every week. The old man would come outside, or into me room, and come and get me, and we'd all sit on the couch and have fish and chips and watch Monty Python. The old man would give me a few sips of his beer, and during the commercials my mother would show me a new spell, or hex and if I could get it right before the end of the programme, I'd get a Twix bar. Both halves. After the Ministry made me a ward, and I wasn't allowed to see Mum and Dad, anymore, I used to watch Monty Python with Albus and Minerva in his office. Then I'd go back to my room and wait by the window for the family owl to arrive with a Twix bar. The Ministry never found out about that."

Snape didn't look like he was remotely close to tears, but you never knew how he was really feeling.

As for Harry, especially after watching all those versions of _A Christmas Carol_ with Dumbledore, who usually cried through the ending, Harry felt positively weepy.

"Don't start blubbering, on me, Potter. There's nothing wrong with crying, but you should never do it in front of anybody. Tears are a sign of weakness. Everyone has weaknesses, but you should never show them to others. Not even your father. When a man cries, he cries alone. And that goes double for a woman, if she wants to be taken seriously. Do you understand, Potter?"

Harry nodded.

"I wouldn't cry over anything so stupid. About me going home to meet the family with you. I'm all for it, but won't Voldemort find out?"

"Not if we take Muggle transportation to avoid being noticed. Besides, I always take Muggle transportation when I go home. I don't want everybody on God's Green Earth knowing where the fuck I live."

"Are we going to take the bus, or something?"

Snape looked at him like he was mad.

"No. I have a car. We'll drive."

"You know how to drive a regular Muggle car, Snape?"

"I have been driving a regular Muggle car since the age of eight, Potter. I was always the designated driver. The old man would ring the house up from the pub, and I'd tie the blocks he rigged up with straps to my feet, jump into the Mini he still drives around in and go pick them up."

Snape was smiling at the horrendous but humorous memory, and Harry laughed a little.

"I can help. I've got a Muggle driver's licence."

"No one drives my car but me, Potter."

"Ever?"

"You can have it when I'm dead. Now, I need to go and do the impossible, and shift Granger out of bed and make sure she's packed everything she needs. Meet us at the Hog's Head at noon. Bring your trunk and your owl. Wear Muggle clothes. Don't tell anyone where you're going and wear your Invisibility Cloak so no one sees you until you see me."

* * *

It had been quite a morning for Dumbledore, a very early morning, considering that Hermione Granger, still dressed in her Yule Ball clothes had knocked him up out of bed at five in the morning, seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

He managed to conduct her to his office, where she actually burst into tears, and he spent a good fifteen minutes hugging her and comforting her.

She was upset because it had only just occurred to her that her feelings regarding Severus Snape went a bit beyond casual fondness and convenience.

"I'm sorry, Headmaster, but I always promised myself I would never fall into the hideous trap of the conventional heterosexual monogamous lifestyle, where I'd be married at 20, a mother at 21 and find myself 35 and divorced with two kids and nothing to show for my life. The very idea that I may be in love with Snape or he with me makes me sick in my stomach. I despise sentiment. I can't get married. I have too much I want to do with my life!" she sobbed.

Dumbledore offered her a meringue from the special pastry drawer in his desk, and his enchanted bottomless Kleenex box.

"You have nothing whatever to worry about, Hermione. Severus knows you are a brilliant witch, and he shares the dreams you have for your future. He's been grooming you for acceptance to the Merlin School, and apprenticeship to him after university. And I must say I know Severus well enough to know he shares your horror of sentimentality, romance, and the conventional middle class lifestyle. I doubt very much that his love for you entails slavery in the kitchen and a Weasley-sized family. You two are quite well matched." Dumbledore assured her.

"But everybody knows about us, now. What if they think I'm, pardon my language, earning my academic credentials on my back?"

"Hermione, everybody knew about you and Severus, before. And no one in the Wizarding World would ever expect Severus Snape to give anyone anything they had not earned or did not deserve. If anything, the general consensus is that he's twice as, er, strict with you than anyone else just to prove to himself he's not playing favourites."

"Do you really think so?" Hermione asked.

"I know so. Now, you have a long trip back to Liverpool ahead of you, and you know Severus. He'll leave sharp at noon with or without you. Why don't you set your time turner back a few hours, have a nice bath and a cup of tea, and go to bed and get a good night's sleep?"

Hermione returned to her rooms, and just fell into bed, without even bothering with the time turner.

She just wanted the night to be over.

* * *

As rough of a night as Snape and Hermione had, it was nothing compared to the one Moaning Myrtle had.

At first she was overjoyed for Ron when she heard how good the band sounded, coming up through the pipes, but as his usual hour came and went and most of the night came and went and there was no Ron, it occurred to her that now that they knew he was in a band, girls were going to throw themselves at him.

Girls who were still alive and well, all the time.

She really wanted to be noble about it, but coming as it did around the holidays, and considering how she felt about Ron, Myrtle broke down and did some ferocious, school-shaking moaning.

She made such a fuss that the other ghosts sent Nearly-Headless Nick up to the prefects bathroom to see what was the matter with her.

He found that the poor girl was completely incoherent, and he was attempting to comfort her, and assure her that the Weasleys were not that kind of family when Ron made a dramatic entrance, still dressed in his stage clothes.

"I could hear you crying all over the school! Did you think…oh, uh, hullo, Nick."

"You see, Myrtle, my dear? He's right here." Nearly-Headless Nick assured Myrtle.

As he glided out he spoke to Ron in a quiet but firm voice.

"See here, Mr. Weasley, if you break poor little Myrtle's heart the ghosts of Hogwarts will never let you have another peaceful night. We'll send the Baron after you until you're old and grey, and very near a ghost, yourself." He told Ron.

When they were alone, Ron ran over to the shade of Myrtle, and he was surprised that when he touched her, his hand didn't pass through her, rather she became flesh and blood.

"It's four. This isn't supposed to happen."

"Well, you weren't here between 12 and 3. It's always midnight, somewhere. I'm sorry, Ron. You never had women pay attention to you, and boys always went mad for me. I don't mind you having your fun, as long as I know you'll visit me sometimes."

"Visit you sometimes? Myrtle, I'm an old-fashioned bloke. When I love a girl, and she's my girl, she's the only girl in the world. What do I want with Lavender Brown, and that lot, when I have you?" Ron told her.

It looked like there were tears in Myrtle's eyes.

"How did we sound?" Ron asked.

"Amazing! And I love your outfit. A really good band really turns me on." Myrtle replied.

"When I figure out how to make you real again, all the time, you can be our singer. And after every gig, we'll go backstage and you can have your way with me behind the Marshall stacks while the roadies hold up the amps." Ron panted.

"Ooooo, how romantic!" Myrtle giggled.

"I love you, Myrtle. If I have to, I'll come to this fucking bathroom every night until the day I die." Ron promised.

Myrtle kissed him.

They had a lovely time, and Ron was late meeting Bill and Ginny.

Ginny managed to convince Bill that the pictures and pensieve he had received anonymously in the mail were slanderous works of dark magic, or at least he wanted to be convinced, and put on a good show of forgetting all about it when he picked up his sister's trunk and carried it into the courtyard.

"I don't care if he's on our fucking side. When we get back, I'll get him into Myrtle's loo and she'll watch the door for us. I'll hold your coat and you can beat the fuck out of Malfoy. She'll do her bit loud enough to drown out his screams. Hell, I'll take a few shots at the little fucker, meself." Ron promised his sister.

Ginny's face brightened up.

"That's brilliant, Ron!"

"What are brothers for?"

Bill looked over his shoulder, and saw the nature of the grin on his little sister's face.

He smiled into the beard he'd grown to cover up some of his scars, and thought that he wouldn't want to be Draco Malfoy for all the tea in China.

* * *

When he found her asleep on top of the covers still in her dress with her hair half up and half down, Snape knew that Hermione had a rougher night than even he had.

He tried to wake her up, gently, but she awoke with a violent start.

"What? Snape! What time is it? I'm not packed, oh shit…"

Hermione tried to get out of bed.

"It's early. You go back to sleep. _Divesto_! Get under the covers, it's freezing in here. I'll get Treacher to pack for you, and I'll wake you when it's time to go."

Hermione settled into her pillows.

"At least Mum and Da already know. Are you sure I'm not putting Treacher out?"

"Go to sleep, Hermione. Treacher likes to look after you." Snape assured her.

When he was sure she was asleep, he quietly summoned the House Elf, who brought Winky with him.

"Winky will pack up all of the lady things that Master Snape and Kreacher would not think of." She announced, and went into the bathroom with an overnight bag that Hermione had sitting by the door, waiting to be packed.

"Is Treacher coming with Master Snape in the car?"

"Muggles might see you, Treacher. Just apparate to the house. Do you think she has this stuff out because she wants to pack it?"

"Treacher thinks so. Master should not worry that he has done something wrong. Why hide when there is no shame? Mistress Granger is still young, and young people makes more of things than there is. She gets over it, you see." Treacher said, confidently.

"Maybe she doesn't like Chrimble, either." Snape ventured.

* * *

Harry wondered if Snape would get dressed up to go see his parents, and war something besides ancient black Levi's and concert tee shirts.

It did not surprise Harry, however, that the old man was not dressed up. He was wearing a black tee shirt and his old Slytherin school tie in a loose knot, and equally old and scroungy black jeans and a beat-up Army surplus military greatcoat, with two rows of tarnished brass buttons on the chest and epaulets.

It was also black.

"What, no leather?" Harry asked.

"You're very funny, Potter. Let's go out to the car."

Snape led Harry out across the back where Aberforth kept his goats, and to an old shed. He muttered a password and the door opened.

Harry heard the purr of a very big engine and his mouth hung open in shock when a shiny, spotless, flawless 1955 Cadillac Coupe DeVille pulled up next to him.

It was black, all black, with black tinted windows except for the gleaming polished chrome in which Harry could see his shocked face.

Snape rolled down the window; he looked like he was born in the driver's seat of the car. The air was filled with the sounds of Deep Purple.

Hermione was already sitting in the passenger seat.

"Granger, don't twiddle with my radio. Well, don't stand there gawking, Potter. Put your things in the boot and let's go." Snape ordered.

Harry did as he was told.

The boot must have been magical, because it had Snape's old school trunk and Hermione's and there was plenty of room for his.

The inside of the car was just as immaculate.

Harry sat Hedwig's cage down beside Crookshanks' cat carrier , got in and shut the door.

"Brilliant! This is the coolest fucking car I've ever seen! Did you make any magical modifications to it?" Harry asked.

"I did away with the necessity of gasoline. And I put a spell on it so it won't get dirty, scratched torn or dented, inside or out. I also enchanted the boot, like Arthur's old car that you and young Mr. Weasley wrecked. Other than that, no. I enjoy driving." Snape replied.

"C'mon, please let me drive! Just a little while. Please, please, please?"

"No. And get your feet off me upholstery, or I will blast them off."

"Blimey, you're a regular fuckin' Father Christmas, ain't you, Snape?" Harry commented.

"More like Ebenezer Scrooge." Hermione opined.

"Bah, humbug!" Snape declared, and they got underway.

* * *

Their first stop was a rather nice middle class suburb, and a rather nice fully detached house.

Snape got out and got Hermione's trunk.

Harry leaned into the passenger seat.

"Your Dad doesn't look too upset. You'd think he'd be having kittens."

"He knows about Snape and I. And he's got nothing to say. He was married when he met me Mum. She'd just joined his practise and she's 25 years younger than he is."

"I didn't know that. Do you have any step-brothers or anything?"

"No. Anyway, Da was always worried I'd take up with some Southerner, he's glad that I picked on a fellow Liverpool fan."

"Football or Quidditch?"

"Snape follows both. And me Da's got into Quidditch since I've gone to Hogwarts. Come on out."

Harry had met Hermione's parents before. He noticed her Dad was a bit older than her Mum, but he never knew the whole story.

John Granger, though as dentist, was as much a Scouser as Snape. He was born working-class, in Vauxhall, and he looked more like a dockworker than a dentist.

He was discussing Snape's dental work with him when Harry and Hermione got out of the car.

Snape had a smile like an old pirate, full of gold crowns, with rather pointy incisors and the odd space inbewteen.

"It's the junk, Snape, that's what's done it. Not to worry, though, you come in when you want and I'll put a crown on it for you. And that one next to the molar in the back will have to come out. Harry Potter! What are you doing in the 'Pool? Slumming it with us Northerners?"

"Uh, Professor Snape's my sponsor at WAND, that's like NA and AA, and so he invited me to spend some of me holiday with his family."

"Yeah, well, I can see where those relatives of yours would drive anybody to drink. Well, Hermione, your Mum will be home soon, you'd best get in the house and unpack. Tell your father I said hello, Professor!" Dr. Grainger boomed.

Harry and Snape got back into the car.

Despite that fact that John Grainger genuinely seemed to like him, Snape's old lady's father always made him a bit nervous.

"What say we stop by the boozer for a game of darts, a nice fry-up, a few tonic water and limes and some telly, Potter?" Snape asked.

"Sounds good to me." Harry agreed.

* * *

Harry was thinking he hadn't been in a fight for a couple of months.

A new record for him, but one he was going to have to break.

There were three or four of them, and they looked a right bunch of hard nuts.

He wished Ginny were there. These were just the kind of yobboes she enjoyed wiping the floor with, but he imagined that he and the Old Man could take care of it.

Snape, meanwhile was terribly calm.

He took off his coat, and handed it to Harry.

"Hold this, Potter." He said.

That was when all Hell broke loose.

With his usual detached air and as if he was lifting a sack of dehydrated belladonna berries to load into his Potions store, Snape grabbed one of the men by his neck and his nuts, hoisted him over his head, shook him a bit, for emphasis, and tossed him casually over the pool table.

The poor fellow was airborne for a few seconds before he fell into the rack of cue sticks with a crash.

The second man approached Snape and punched him square in the face.

The Potions Master shook his head a little, smiled, and then broke the second fool's nose with the heel of his right hand while driving his left fist deep into the poor slob's solar plexus.

He fell off of Snape's fist like it was the point of a sword and Snape shoved his crumpled form aside with his foot.

The third man came up from behind Snape and Harry smashed him across the back with a pool cue.

He turned around with his fists up and threw a right at Harry, which Harry easily ducked.

"Fucking punter." Harry sneered.

He let the arsehole have it, a hard left right where his jawbone met his skull.

He went down for the count.

"Next?" Snape asked.

A fourth man collected what was left of his companions and took it on his toes.

"Now, Potter, I believe it was your shot."

"Malfoy was right. You destroyed those arse'oles! I didn't ardly have to do anything. I suppose you learned how to fight the same way I did."

"I learned how to fight like that long before Knockturn Alley. I learned in my living room when my father was drunk and my mother and I wanted to watch telly in peace. Liverpool's a tough town, Potter. Besides, when I was a skinny little boy, everyone was always beating the fuck out of me. As soon as I became a man, all that stopped. Immediately."

Harry sort of knew what he meant. The summer before fourth year he had a sunken chest and spindly arms and a squeaky voice and had a hard time lifting his trunk. By the summer after fifth year there was hair growing on his chest, he had to get new robes because his shoulders were splitting his old ones and they were too short for him, and he found his limbs had gotten wiry rather than spindly and acquired the strength so that he could carry his trunk in one hand and Ginny's in the other with ease.

He lined up his shot.

"Nine in the corner pocket." He announced, and made the shot.

"Owww! Fuck, I broke me knuckle, again."

Snape put his hand over Harry's.

"_Episkey_!" he said, quietly, and Harry's hand was fine.

"You mean you can do wandless magic? Then you could have…"

"Hexed those yobboes into the next dimension? Yes. But it would have called attention to us and we are travelling in secret as Muggles. Besides, beating the shit out of them was much more fun."

"Yeah. It was." Harry had to agree.

One of the barmaids came over with two glasses of Coke and put them on the end of the pool table.

"I can always tell when there's a Snape in the pub. Bodies flying everywhere and blood all over the floor. Is this your boy, Sev?" she asked.

"My student, Rory."

The barmaid looked at both of them.

"Uh-huh. Whatever you say. Tell Tobias I said 'ello."

Harry intently watched the barmaid's miniskirt walk away.

"Do you know her?" he asked.

"She's your grandfather's mistress. I wouldn't if I were you."

"But what about your mother?"

"Her lover works in her shop."

Harry shook his head.

_Well it certainly explains a lot about me_. He thought.

* * *

After a few more games of pool, they drove only a few blocks away.

"What do they call this part of town, Snape?"

"West Derby. This is the place."

Snape pulled the car up in front of an old Victorian house marked 310. It was painted royal blue and had ivy growing all over it, but it looked well kept-up.

There was an ancient but mint condition Mini parked in the driveway, and an old Triumph Bonneville as well.

"Come on, Potter." He said.

Harry was nervous as they walked towards the door, but he tried not to show it.

Snape knocked on the door and it opened enough to admit the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun.

"Da, I've told you, that's not going to help."

"Bullshite, Sev! I dinna give a fuck who or what ye are, blown 'in half wi' a shotgun is blown in half wi' a shotgun! One o' those sons of bitches wi' that thing on his arm like you got tried to come ''in 'ere an before yer Mum could get her wand out, he were in pieces all over the fuckin porch! Blam!"

Harry and Snape walked into the house and Snape shut the door.

"When was this, Dad?"

"Summertime."

"Well now we know what happened to Macnair's protégé. Dad, this is Harry Potter."

"I know who he is! I got his picture all over me house! My grandson the War Hero! Just like my son the War Hero! Tobias Snape, lad. I'm yer grandfather!"

Harry shook his grandfather's hand and Tobias squeezed the hell out of it, then crushed him in a big bear hug.

Tobias Snape was, much as his son had described him, a big ginger Scotsman starting to go grey, but built like a brick wall. He had a barrel chest and great massive arms bulging out of his white undershirt, and huge broad shoulders and legs like tree trunks.

He was such a massive figure that Harry hardly noticed he was only five foot seven.

Harry then heard a jingling sound like the one those gypsy coin and bell belts made, and a tall, thin, willowy woman with long black hair seemed to glide into the room. She hadn't a speck of grey and wore a witch's robes, with one of those gypsy belts, and pointy toed Granny boots that were very highly polished black leather. She was the same height as Harry, and a bit shorter than Snape.

"I thought I heard your voice, Severus. How have you been?"

"As well as can be expected, Mum."

"Well, this war will be over soon. Then you can finally get around to having your own life. And you, Harry, are you finding it difficult to stay sober? Or discovering you're part of this insane family?"

"Er, at this point, I'm glad to have a family." Harry truthfully told his grandmother.

"That's the way I feel about it. As I'm sure you know my name is Eileen, but if you want to, you can call me Ellie."

"Okay." Harry said.

"Where's grandfather?" Snape asked.

"He's gathering wolfsbane in the Carpathians for the shop. If you don't get to meet your great grandfather this time, Harry, I'm sure there will be a next time." Eileen assured him.

"Well, get your things into the 'ouse, then we've got to go out and get a fucking tree. Did you bring that Invisibility thingy, Harry?" Tobias announced.

"Yes."

"Good. Then this year the rozzers definitely won't catch me choppin' it dwon."

It didn't take long to see that his personal eccentricities were not at all unusual in his family. Harry could see his grandparents were quite eccentric, and they did a lot of fighting followed by rather overly affectionate making up that made Harry think it was good to observe Snape's advice not to come into any room without knocking. He could see where all it would take was some booze to turn these people into maniacs, but it was very obvious to Harry that they were sorry about the way they had treated their son, and that they did love him, after all, and wanted to make it up to them.

Snape wasn't any different to his Mum and Dad than he was to anyone else, except his mother could out-snark him any day of the week. He didn't seem tense at all around them, like he sometimes was at Hogwarts; they were probably the only people he was sure wouldn't hate him for being his usual, miserable self.

"Cheer up, lad. It's Chrimble. What makes yer so miserable over it? We're all together as a family, for the first time. Don't look so fuckin' grim." Tobias suggested.

"Maybe I would like Chrimble more if you two maniacs hadn't beaten me half to death with an extension cord over my first holidays from Hogwarts." Snape shot back.

"Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, Severus! Cry me a river, will you? You only remember what we did to you. What you conveniently forget is that you were Rosemary's Baby! I admit, we overreacted, because we were drunk, but we did catch you trying to burn the house down!If I didn't practise magic, we'd all be dead! " Eileen reminded him.

"You were trying to burn the house down?" Harry asked.

"I was drunk!" Snape protested.

"You were eleven!" Harry exclaimed.

"Yes, but he was still drunk. The minute he was old enough to reach the table, it was drink, drink, drink! We tried to hide the booze from him but when we did that, he'd go into my lab and drink up all the potions! Anything! Then he'd go off his head. I know it's out fault, for not being the best parents, but the things Damien, here, did when he was a kid! Our neighbour had this fucking wicked rottweiler mutt that was the terror of the neighbourhood. One day it bit your mother and your father got out the wand he'd got hold of the gods only know how and put the Death Curse on it in front of the whole neighbourhood. The Aurors were everywhere! They nearly took him from us, then! He was only seven!" Eileen explained.

"We had some kind of fucking holidays in those days. D'you remember when you were in your 6th year, an' you came to visit us on the sly and you brought Lily?" Tobias asked.

"Oh, gods? What set us off that time?" Snape asked.

"I dinna ken. It had a lot to do with cheap rotgut whiskey and that Hell's Horntail shit you brought around. You shoulda seen it, Harry! We had a proper fight, we did, your father and I. Ellie and Lily had to, what's it called, stupefy us to keep us from killin' one another. And when we come to, I got up, and I helped Sev up, and I spit a tooth onto the floor and slapped him on the back and I said 'That's' my boy, he's a man now for sure.' An' we had another bottle or two, and had a fine time. What a bunch of loons we are." Tobias recalled.

Harry started thinking about some of the crazy things he did when he was high, or drunk, and he laughed to himself.

"Do you remember at the Yule Ball in fifth year, I came up to the Faculty table, with smoke from the Horntail I was drunk on still coming out of me nose and I told you that you were a fucking nasty, evil, wicked old screw, and that you must have fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down? You were furious!" Harry asked Snape.

Tobias laughed, uproariously.

"And I picked him up, threw him over me shoulder and I tossed him right out of the school. He stood up, turned around and punched me right in the face. Broke me fucking nose. I didn't hit him back, I just pointed me wand at him and cast "_Divesto_" Left him naked out in the cold for half and hour and when I thought better and came out to get him and put him to bed, I couldn't find him. He'd gone to Hagrid's hut, and Hagrid lent him one of his big fur coats. They were having tea when Harry got up and wandered off and we both went looking for him. We found him in the woods, and he was high as a kite and happy as a clam, singing "19th Nervous Breakdown" and pissing his name in the snow." Snape finished.

He laughed too, and so did Harry.

Eileen smiled and shook her head.

"You Snapes and your war stories." She observed.

* * *

Harry couldn't help but warm to his grandparents, immediately. After all, he never expected to have any such people in his life and they might have been a bit nuts, but so was he. It was as if he could finally see where he'd come from in the world, looking at pictures and spending time with these people who reminded him so much in so many ways of himself.

He went to the pub alone with his grandfather the second night and he was rather surprised when the subject of Severus came up.

"I know ye canna imagine why yer old man says he's forgiven us an then acts tha way he do. Well he's afraid ter get close ter his family. Ter anyone. He canna risk that Tom Riddle finding any a this oot, an' he thinks it'll be easier on us, if he dinna survive this war if he keeps himself distant. Or mebbe its easier on him. Yer old man, he's a lonely sort. He was a lonely boy an' he's grown up to be a lonely man. Ye may want ter hang that on th' way we treated him, but his Mum's the same way. Ye just have ter take him as he is. He's still me boy an I love him just the same. His heart was big enough to forgive me the terrible wrongs I done him, that's proof enough for me." Tobias pronounced.

"I just can't figure him out."

"Ah, his mother's like that, too. I quit tryin' a long time ago. In the summer, he brought your Hermione around here and I asked him as to whether he was finally gonna get married again, because it was plain to me he loved the girl and she loves him. An' all I got from him was a load of bollocks on the subject. That's his way."

Harry looked into his glass of Coke.

"That would make my best friend my stepmother. You know how I found out they were together?" Harry asked.

"Tell me, Harry, lad."

"Well I had snuck into his office to steal some potion ingredients. With my Invisibility Cloak. And before I could get out, him and Hermione came in and locked the door. It was all business, mind you. They talked about the war, and about glasses and they called each other Granger and Snape. All business until he sat her down on the desk and proceeded to give it to her, that is." Harry confided.

Tobias Snape roared with laughter until tears came out of his eyes.

"Aye, ye poor lad! T'wasn't bad enough seein' yer teacher shaggin' yer best friend, but then ye find out he's your old Dad!" he howled.

"I know! I put my fingers in me ears and turned me face to the wall, but I could still hear her screaming Snape! Snape! Snape!" Harry laughed.

"Ah well, ye can say what ye want about a Snape, but there ain't been one born yet who'll leave a woman unhappy." Tobias said, winking.

"They come for the Boy Who Lived, but they come back for another ride on the ol' Firebolt." Harry replied.

"I'll drink to that, Harry, m'lad!"

They clinked glasses and Tobias called to his girlfriend for another round.

* * *

The next day his grandmother took him to her shop with her.

It was an ingenious place. There was one entrance for Muggles who wanted their cards read and so on, or fancied themselves witches to buy charms and potions and crystals, and a secret entrance available only to witches and wizards that was a proper supply house for just about everything.

On both sides Eileen's own special potions were on sale. She stocked everything from potions to cure coughs and colds to love potions to powerful protective charms.

There was a laboratory in the back, where Eileen spent considerable time, working.

"The Princes have always been Masters at the art of potion-making, Harry. I think the only happy times Severus had with me in his childhood were in this room. He used to watch me work, and he was very young when he started to help me. I still have a little of the first potion he ever invented, himself. Right here in this vial. He made it when he was seven. It…it cures hangovers."

"He used to make that for me, so I'd be able to get something out of my classes." Harry commented.

He thought she was about to cry, so he hastily told her it wasn't her fault.

"But it is my fault, Harry. And Tobias's. If we had been better parents, Severus wouldn't have suffered the way he did when he was a child. He may never have gone over to the Dark Lord. Lily might still be alive, and James and all of us might be able to be a family."

Then, just as her son was able to, Eileen composed herself rapidly.

"Then again, who know? Booze notwithstanding, when a nymphomaniac marries a borderline psychopath, what kind of parents can they be? I've always been shocked but proud that Severus grew up to be a better person than either of us ever were. And he couldn't have picked a better witch than Lily Evans to have as his friend. Or as your mother. You were not a mistake, Harry, or an accident. I always told Severus that about himself. Despite what his father and I were like, he was always wanted, and always loved. And your parents loved each other and they both loved you. All three of them. Do you understand?"

Harry just nodded.

He understood perfectly.

"Ellie, you don't seem crazy at all. You're like Sna- Severus I mean. Calm, reasonable and level-headed. To a point, that is."

"I'm only crazy when it comes to sex. And when I'm drunk. And I don't drink anymore."

"Me neither."

Harry picked up a red bottle with no label.

"What does this potion do?"

"I made one up for you and one for Severus. It's called Animagic Potion. You might need it. If you swallow three drops of it, it gives you the power to change into an animal as if you were an animagus. If you dip your wand in it three times, it extends the strength and power of you Patronus. And if you throw three drops of it at your enemy, then your animals will come in droves to you rescue. It's a secret formula of my own. I don't intend of passing its derivation on to anyone but your father, and only the when he gets my recipe book after I've died."

"What if an animagus drinks three drops of it?"

"It would make their magic so powerful they would be invincible. Perhaps even to the Death Curse itself, although I wouldn't be the one to try out that theory."

Harry put the potion in his pocket.

He had the feeling his grandmother wasn't ripping off the Muggles whose fortunes she told.

* * *

On Christmas Eve, Harry was watching a re-run of _Are You Being Served_ with Tobias, and they were putting away an extra large pizza as a snack when Eileen came into the room with a flask that was giving off stinky green smoke.

"Drink this, Toby." She told her husband.

Absently, Tobias took the flask, and drank from it.

Snape came running up the stairs.

"Da! Are you off your fucking nut? Why do you do that!"

"Be quiet, Sev. Well, Toby?"

"What's it supposed ter do?"

"Pick up the remote."

Tobias picked up the remote.

Eileen took out her wand.

"_Expelliarimus_!" she cried.

The remote shook, and before their eyes vaporised into its component ions.

"Not done yet. Bugger."

She went back down to her lab, with Snape at her heels, chastising her.

"Leave your mother alone, Sev!" Tobias shouted.

He pulled another remote out from under the couch.

"I been tryin' out Ellie's potions since 1957. Worst thing ever happened ter me I changed into a dog. Stayed that way for a week. But your Dad always wanted a pet, so iverthin' worked out for tha best." He said, and reached for another slice of pizza.

They saved a few slices for Severus.

* * *

The whole family returned to Hogwarts in time for the school's Christmas dinner.

It was the first time Harry had ever attended the Faculty Dinner, which was quite a different experience from attending the student dinner.

For one thing, Dumbledore and McGonagall didn't pretend they weren't married.

And everybody who wasn't trying to stay sober was drunk.

Harry found himself sitting between his father and Remus Lupin, with the elder Snape sitting beside the younger.

All four of them stuck at the end of the table.

"Why are we way down here?" He asked Snape.

"Because both of you have the table manners of a werewolf."

"So? Table manners are for pooves and li'le girls! More food down'ere at the trough!" Tobias boomed.

Harry ate, and ate, and ate, and ate until he felt like he was going to explode.

Then, he had dessert.

Mercifully for him, he fell asleep during most of the toasts, but Lupin elbowed him awake when Dumbledore stood, unsteadily, to make his toast.

Harry opened his eyes and realised he had fallen asleep on Tonks.

"Sorry!" he said about six times, trying to wipe the pool of drool off her chest with his napkin.

"S'awright, 'Arry." Tonks said.

"Ladeees and zhendelemen. I hope you've all had a lurvely Chriss-mass this yaer an I wanna thanka houszelves fer makin suzzzchanizze dinner. I'm so glad that we're all alive here and in one piezze. And we've managedto get Harry zzzoober, which is more'n I c'n zzzzay for me. Merry Chrizzmazz an Happy Neeew Year."

Dumbledore lifted his glass, and wobbled oh his feet.

McGonagall got up and staedird him.

She took the glass and put it on the table.

"I think you've had enough, Albus." She told him.

Harry lifted his glass of Coke.

"God bless us every one!" he said.

That got a big laugh.

* * *

After dinner, Tobias and Eileen returned home.

In the further event of having a family Christmas Harry went to the old man's dungeon to watch Monty Python.

He had, with much trepidation bought his father a prezzie for Chrimble, as Snape put it, in the form of an antique mithril cauldron after years of hearing him complain that there were some potions you cold never get right in an iron alloy cauldron because iron and magic went together like oil and water.

It cost Harry a lot of money, but he had a lot of money, so he bought it.

Snape was both surprised and thrilled to the extent that he gave Harry a brief hug, and Harry hugged him back.

It was a bit awkward, but, in the end, it wasn't so bad.

Snape had gotten Harry a present too.

A potion in a little blue vial that if poured over the wreck of any car, would return it to its original state, with whatever modifications the wizard using it intended and protect it ever after from any kind of wear and tear.

He had also arranged, through his contacts with a half-blood in WAND who's father was a Muggle member of NA highly placed in the Muggle government to get Harry's suspended driver's license reinstated and pending charges against him for drunkenness-in-charge and public intoxication dropped on the grounds that he had completed a treatment program through his school and was reformed and recovered.

After the exchange of gifts, the two men got into telling war stories, and not the kind about battles they had fought in.

"…and then, after I sign her tit, she just goes absolutely nuts, and she bends over the sink and she lifts up her robes, and her skirt and she says, 'I'm ready! I'm ready! Put it in me!' Just like that!"

Snape was laughing so hard, he thought he was going to cry.

"Well, I figured, what the fuck? So I did it. And she started to scream. I mean scream like a siren. So I put my hand over her mouth. I mean I didn't want people to think I was killing her. And she starts pounding on me leg. And I'm thinking, shit, I'm going to have a bruise there, tomorrow. I'm also wondering why I'm doing this at all, but well, yunno how it is. So here's the best part. So, I'm fucking this crazy witch, whoever she is, and I've got my hand over her mouth and she's bent over the sink, and I'm just about to get me nut, when who walks in the door but…get this…Neville Longbottom!"

"Oh no! Not Neville! Not Neville!"

Harry was laughing too.

"Yes! Neville! He just looks at me for a minute and then he yells, "Harry, what the hell are you doing?" And I realise, with my hand over her mouth and her beating on me leg, it must look like I'm, I'm fucking raping this girl. In the loo at the Leaky Cauldron, yet. So, I take my hand off the girl's mouth and she starts screaming all these filthy things, and moaning. And d'you know what Neville says?"

"I can only imagine?"

"He says, 'Blimey, Harry, you'd better cover her mouth up, again. I'll watch the door for you till you're done.' That's what he said! It was!"

Harry reached into the pocket of his robe for his English Ovals, and found he was all out.

"Here, take one of mine. Have you ever heard of Arabella McMasters?" Severus asked.

Harry rolled his eyes.

"Who hasn't? You can't hardly breathe that she isn't somewhere talking about the dangers of this song, or that book, or some movie. She and those dried-up old prudes in WHAP (Witch Housewives Against Pornography) picketed the opening of Fred and George's Shop because they said their products would have a corrupting influence on young witches and wizards."

Snape smiled, evilly.

"Arabella was in my graduating class. She was a member of Slytherin house, actually. And she is not a dried-up old prude. WHAP is just a cover. Arabella is one of six Third Degree Sex Magi in Britain."

Harry's jaw unhinged.

"You're fucking joking?"

"No, I'm not. And she's not just in it for spiritual enlightenment. When Led Zeppelin played in the Great Hall 1977, Arabella bragged for weeks about having shagged every member of the band, and all the roadies. Arabella didn't give a shit about the war, or what she was going to do with her life. She took fucking very seriously. It was her life's work. And for fun there was always getting high and partying. She was a very popular witch, I can assure you of that. Arabella was one of the few women who went to this school who didn't mind being seen with me in public. But, after she founded her anti-everything crusade, I imagined that she had indeed turned into a dried up old prude. As it turns out, I was wrong."

"No!"

"Yes. I think I'd been teaching for about three years, and WHAP and WAND both gave a presentation to the older Hogwarts students in the Great Hall. Arabella acted like she didn't even know who I was, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard pounding on me door in the middle of the night. I was actually asleep, so got out of bed, put on my bathrobe and stumbled over to the door. And there was Arabella McMasters. Before I could say a word, she casually unbuttoned her robe and all she had on under it was a purple teddy and some thigh-high fishnet stockings. And she hadn't turned into any old bag, either. Then, she reached inside my bathrobe, grabbed hold of my old fellow, and said 'So, Severus, how have you been doing?' Normally I despise hypocrisy, but in that case, I found I had to make an exception. She's come back, since and I haven't turned her away, yet. "

"Oh that was evil! Evil!" Harry laughed.

"Well I do despise hypocrisy. I have never pretended to be anything less than the mean, rotten, evil bastard that I am. Son."

It was the "son" that did it. Both of them just fell about, so much so that they didn't notice Hermione and her bag arrive in the Potion master's rooms.

"Oh, hello, Hermione." Harry said.

Snape abruptly rest himself to Dour Professor Mode

"That was quite a funny story, Potter, but you'd better be off now."

"Oh sure. Good night Professor. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Hermione."

Harry exited rapidly.

Hermione eyed his exit, suspiciously, and shot Snape a dirty look.

He pretended not to notice.

"So, this is an early present, then. I didn't expect you till tomorrow."

Snape cast a sealing spell on his quarters.

"Sev, are you drunk?"

"Of course I'm not fucking drunk! I haven't been drunk for nearly two decades. Why?"

"Because you and Harry seemed to be having an awfully good time."

"Well, Potter and I have each come to realise that the other is not such a bad sort, after all. Now that he's taking up his responsibilities and not acting like a spoilt little shit all the time, we can get along."

Hermione wasn't buying it, and she was just about done with Snape's pathetic attempts to conceal that he was Harry's old man.

Over the years there were things she had noticed, little things, certain similarities between her lover and her best friend. Not to mention the Potions master's generally, oh, _fatherly_ behaviour towards Harry. It was on the tip of her tongue to demand the truth, but she realised if she did that Snape would just coolly and outrightly lie to her, and work up some very convincing indignation that she would even suggest such a thing.

Which would really piss her off to no end. Besides, it was Chrimble, and no time for a showdown, so she decided to give Snape a break.

"I see. How was your trip to see your Mother and Dad?"

"Unremarkable."

And that was all she was going to hear about it.

Hermione was angry. She'd left her parents house on Christmas Day to be with him, and now Snape was giving her the cold shoulder.

Typical Snape. It wasn't as what he did at home with his family were classified secrets. But he was prepared to act like they were, of course.

She tried again.

"How was Christmas at Hogwarts?"

"Oh, the usual."

"Dammit, Snape, if you're going to be like that, I'm going back home! You were all happy and chummy with Harry just a few minutes ago! Don't you have enough warm blood in your cold little reptile heart to make room for two people?" Hermione insisted.

He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Don't get angry with me, Hermione. My visit to my parents was unremarkable. They still want to know when you and I are going to get married and produce grandchildren. And Chrimble here was the usual. Except Albus got drunk at dinner and almost fell over while he was slurring his way through his holiday toast."

Snape chuckled.

"Cold little reptile heart! I like that one. Pick up your things. C'mon over to the hearth and I'll show you your prezzie for Chrimble."

They used the Floo network to go back to the Head Girl room, and with a theatrical flourish of his wand, Snape lit up all the lights.

On her desk, there was a slim, carved wooden box.

"Tap the lid with your wand." Snape encouraged her.

When Hermione unlatched the lid, it opened of its own accord and unfolded from itself a huge bookcase stuffed with titles, and a little table attached which had on it a mini-laboratory. There was even a blotter, a quill an inkwell and paper, and a little chair.

"You just tap the lid again and it all closes up. The box only weighs three pounds. This way you can take all of your work with you, anywhere. It's sort of like a laptop, but for wizards."

Hermione was beside herself.

"Snape, you're a fucking genius? Look at this! How did you do it? I love it."

"Magic?" Snape replied, smiling lopsidedly.

Despite the fact it was another one-word answer, Hermione happily threw herself into his arms for a big hug.

"One more thing. The school is deserted. I think we'd be safe, just this once, if I stay here with you, tonight."

He'd given her the gift of old books and musty chemicals, he was standing in her cold little room barefoot in a pair of faded ancient black jeans and a black tee shirt with a hole in it that said "Hogwarts Faculty, 1981" on it, but that suited Hermione just fine.

"Look at your poor, lonely little bed. For generations, Granger, so many Head Girls have lain in that exact poor, lonely little bed, oh, just dreaming of a man like me. A dirty, black-hearted old bastard." Snape joked.

"The dirtier and the more black-hearted, the better."

Snape bent Granger back in a big soul kiss, and he was about to start pulling up on her pullover when there was a knock on the door.

"Erm, it's Harry. It's early yet, and there's no one in Gryffindor Tower. And Professor Dumbledore is watching _It's a Wonderful Life_. I don't suppose anyone behind this door wants to eat leftovers and watch _Monty Python_?"

"I knew it was Potter. How did I know it was Potter?" Snape said, through gritted teeth.

"Aww, can't we let him in, Sev? We'll just watch one movie. And I still have the time turner."

"It's Chrimble. We can't tell him to get lost. Come in, Potter."

As Hermione went to get some plates, she pretended not to notice Harry had no shoes on, and a pair of faded black jeans and a Hogwarts Quidditch Champion tee shirt with the sleeves ripped off.

Harry pointed his wand at his Professor.

"_De-engorgio!" _Ididn't interrupt anything, did I, Snape?" Harry asked, smirking.

"Oh no, Potter. What ever would give you that impression?"

"Well, you know, it is Christmas, and families are supposed to share. I'm sure Hermione wouldn't mind it, if we stayed away from her arse, and we could always obliviate that part of her memory later…"

"Potter!"

"Just kidding. So how about the _Meaning of Life_?"

"Fine. Everyone into the hearth, I suppose." Snape sighed, resignedly.

He comforted himself on Potter's victory with the knowledge that the task that he and Remus and Albus had devised to keep them busy until school came back and test their mettle for the Final Battle was going to be quite a victory for him, indeed.

Even though Harry was full of Christmas cheer, he couldn't help but wonder, just a little bit what the old man was smiling about.

_(Author's Note: Those of you who want to know more about the Snape family and our hero's past, in geberal, as well as the illustrious pasts of Sirius, Remus, James, Lily, Lucius and the rest of the gang, check out "Diamonds and Rust: Wizarding in the 70's" It's under Severus S. & Lily P. Thanks!)_


	14. A Riddle For Ron

**Chapter Fourteen: A Riddle For Ron**

Harry awoke on Boxing Day in the afternoon, thinking he would have Gryffindor Tower all to himself.

He strolled into the Common Room, naked as usual, with a towel over his arm, his glasses perched on the end of his nose, and a cigarette in his mouth.

He was surprised to see that Hermione, Ron, and Ginny were all there, awake, dressed and most likely waiting for him.

"What the fuck is this?" Harry inquired.

"It's fucking bollocks, that's wot." Ron grumbled.

"I dunno. It gets me out of the 'ouse." Ginny added.

"Professor Snape and Headmaster Dumbledore thought performed rather poorly during the Crich affair. So, they have devised an exercise for us to perform over our holidays to assure that when we are asked to follow plans and orders in the Voldemort operation, our performance is greatly improved."

Hermione delivered the whole speech in clipped tones that were light years away from her usual Scouse accent, which, although not as low and common as Snape's, was nothing like the BBC newsreader voice she was currently employing.

"Fuck! If you've gone all toffee-nosed on us, then we must be in for it." Ron mused.

"Professor Snape! Listen to you! Fuck me! Look, Hermione, if you want to put on airs, trying doing it in front of people what don't know you. You don't go talkin' about a man formally after you spend 'alf the morning gobblin' is nob." Ginny rebuked her.

Harry laughed, and Ron looked like he might be sick.

"Hermione, honestly, how could you? Snape's so fucking ugly." Ron added.

"Yeah, but in a Bon Scott sort of way. Look how many bints he got." Harry pointed out.

He was still grateful he looked more like his mother and his grandmother than his father and his grandfather, but he felt he had to stand up for the family, nonetheless.

Ron thought about it.

"True. C'mon, let's go to Snape's office, then, and get the bad news." He replied.

"Isn't anyone going to apologise to me? Harry, shouldn't you get dressed?"

Harry picked up his sweatpants from where he'd thrown them the night before.

"No. And I'm dressed as I'm going to get." He said.

* * *

Snape was unabashedly gleeful about having the Fantastic Four (part two) over a barrel for the holidays.

And on the subject of barrels, he let them have it with both.

"I'm not going to fuck about with you lot. We're on our holidays, so today I'm your superior, not your professor. Let me start by saying how well the four of you bollocksed up the Professor Crich operation. Even I was surprised at the level of bumbling and incompetence you managed.Granger, you and the Killer Queen, here, must have been out of your tiny little minds to take Oliver Crich on, alone. At least, however you both showed bravely, foolish though it was. You did get the job done, and I must, grudgingly, give you credit for that. Which, Potter, is more than I can say for you and Weasley. For all your big talk at the briefing, you yelped and squealed like a couple of virgins backstage at a Motorhead gig. Then, when you got a little blood on you it was a toss up which one of you could engage in more full scale yawning all over my poor bathroom. What are you lot going to do with Tom fucking Riddle? Granger, are you going to try a lot of spells without your wand a first year can do with? Miss Weasley, d'you think brute force will work? And what about you, Weasley? Are you going to puke on the Dark Lord, and cry? That's a hell of a fucking strategy, then. And as for you, Potter, you can wipe that Mr. Big Swinging Cock look right off your face, because you're not Tom's type. He doesn't do rough trade and he's not going to decided to spare your life because you've got a big plonker."

Snape let that all sink in as he lit a cigarette.

He continued to sneer at them through his customary veil of thin blue smoke.

"I expected much more of you women, especially you, Granger, as veterans. And as for you boys, and I boys is what I mean, because you fucking well didn't act like men, that was pathetic. Truly pathetic. Since all you seem to think about is your drumsticks and your dick, then, Weasley, the Headmaster and I have come up with a little exercise that might actually hold your attention long enough for you to put down the spliff and do something bleedin' constructive. And as for the rest of you, you're going to swallow your fucking great Titanic-sized egos and pull together and be real friends to Mr. Weasley. Not just use him for a sounding board, a dogsbody, a scapegoat and the butt of any jokes that may be lying around. When a man who plays drums as well as he does is afraid to leave his basement because only Moaning Myrtle of all people treats him like a man and believes in him, that means the lot of you must be criminally shitty mates, indeed. Even his own fucking sister. If I was Weasley, I would have told the likes of you yobboes to fuck off out of it a long time ago. Are we clear?"

Harry and Ginny and Hermione were floored by what Snape had said, but Ron seemed oblivious.

After he heard Myrtle mentioned, that was all he cared about.

"Does this have to do with Myrtle? Whatever it is, I'll do it. I don't give a fuck. For Myrtle, I'll do anything." Ron vowed.

"Remember you said that, Weasley. Granger, write this down. I have a little riddle for you. When you solve it, Mr. Weasley will have his happy ending. Your riddle is a quote from Lovecraft. 'That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.' Now, since I am not a total bastard, I will give you some clues. There is no such thing as a horcrux. Also, the dead do not come back to life. And finally, remember to be logical. You have one week to solve the riddle. Good bye."

"That's it? You lousy bastard! That's not fair!" Ron squawked.

He knew he was about to be immediately sorry he had insulted Snape to his face, but for a moment, he just didn't care.

Hermione sucked her breath in, sharply, Ginny made this sort of peeping sound, and Harry's cigarette fell out of his mouth.

They waited for Snape to manifest his vengeance.

But, he only smiled, and slowly exhaled

"Fuck you, sonny. Whoever said that life was fair?" he replied.

* * *

The last place you would expect Ron, Harry and Hermione to be over the Christmas holidays was in the library, but that's where they were, poring over books that even Hermione found tedious, trying to solve the riddle.

Harry looked over at Hermione, and wondered if she was thinking what he was thinking. He was thinking it was a bitter cold night and he could be in bed right now, and not alone, either, but instead he was in the library, on a wild goose chase.

"Dobby has hot chocolate for everyone! Does Harry Potter's Wheezy need more books?"

They gratefully accepted the refreshments from Dobby.

"No, Dobby, what I need is an answer." Ron said, glumly

"To what question, Wheezy?" Dobby asked, cheerfully.

Ron shrugged.

"What is not dead that can eternal lie?" he replied

They had been at it for days, they might as well ask the house elf.

Dobby laughed.

"No, Dobby is serious. He doesn't want to play silly games. I will get some sandwiches. And more books."

Laughing to himself, the house elf disapparated with a crack..

"Even Dobby knows. The solution must be right in front of our faces, and we can't see it. We've only got a few hours left." Ron commented.

Harry was about to reply, but then Hermione's head snapped up from a book, and Ginny's head snapped up from another book, and you could smell the ozone from the dynamos in their minds spinning out a breakthrough.

"What is it?' Ron asked.

"It's so simple, Ginny. How could we have missed it? How the fuck did we miss it?" Hermione asked.

"We got too full of ourselves, that's how. Read too much into very simple clues." Ginny replied.

"Snape said to be logical."

"Dobby said it was a silly game."

"So let's be logical, and play Snape's silly game. Are you two with us?' Hermione asked.

"No. But we'll catch up." Harry assured them.

"We'll break down Snape's clues like they were an exercise in logic. If there is no such thing as a horcrux, then, in the form of her ghost, Myrtle's soul is complete. And if dead is dead, them Myrtle must be alive." Ginny reasoned.

"Ginny, that's it! Leave it to Snape to present us with a riddle in pure logic! So, Myrtle is not dead. And if Myrtle is not dead, then the basilisk could not have killed her. Myrtle is the thing that is not dead but can eternal lie. The Lovecraft quote originally referred to Great Cthulhu, who was in a kind of suspended animation sleeping in the depths of the sea. Myrtle is not dead, she's in some kind of suspended animation." Hermione agreed.

Harry broke in.

"Wait a fucking second! I've read Lovecraft. Cthulhu would rise when his followers called him from his eternal sleep. Snape wants us to do something to call Myrtle out of her state of suspended animation!"

"So what about the second part of the riddle? With strange aeons even death may die? And we're all out of clues." Ron interrupted.

"No, we're not. Myrtle saw the basilisk. But it didn't kill her. To look at the basilisk is death. But Myrtle didn't die." Harry continued.

"But the basilisk died! Death! The basilisk is death, and death died!" Ron added.

"Now you're catching on! But we're way past that, lads! Myrtle wore glasses. She didn't see the basilisk with her own eyes! It must have frozen her, like it froze me, or Mrs. Norris, or Colin Creevey. But somehow, instead of paralysing her, perhaps because the glasses were not as much protection as a mirror, or a camera lens, or water, because she actually saw the basilisk, not a reflection or an image, perhaps…" Hermione explained.

Then her train of though stalled.

"The only explanation is that the, erm, basilisk event caused an irregularity in space-time. Death can't die, and that which is dead is dead. Myrtle is frozen in the moment in space and time when she saw the basilisk. Like, shit, I dunno, a bubble!" Ginny postulated

"And the spell Jimmy Page came up with makes it possible, with a certain potion to temporarily release Myrtle from that bubble. If we can find a way to break the bubble that keeps her trapped in that point in space and time…I won't need the spell?" Ron asked.

"That's it! Mind, if I went somewhere unfamiliar and I got lost, and you lot where I was, then you would have to come and get me, some_where_. Yunno, some_where _I was lost. Well, Myrtle hasn't been lost some_where_, she's been lost some_when_. We know _where_ she is, we just didn't know _when_ she is." Ginny clarified

"She's 1947. Or at least the immediate space around her is. If we can dispel that immediate space, that little pocket of 1947, then we will know where Myrtle is and when. She'll be right here, and right now." Hermione finished.

"So how do we break the bubble?" Ron asked.

"I have no fucking idea." Ginny admitted.

Hermione shrugged, helplessly.

"Brilliant. Fucking brilliant." Ron grumbled.

"What do you mean you have no fucking idea? Well you wouldn't, would you? Either of you. Hermione, you were frozen, and Ginny, you were dying. The basilisk may be the death that died, but it can also be the thing that eternal lies. Its body still lies in the chamber of secrets. And so do its eyes, and its fangs. Death may have died, but the fangs and eyes of the basilisk are deadly forever. Do you get me, Ginny?" Harry asked.

"I get it! Let's go!" Ron interrupted.

"Well I fucking well don't! Go on, Harry." Ginny replied.

Harry seemed terribly excited.

"There are no horcruxes! If there are no horcruxes, then what did it do to Tom Riddle's book when I stabbed it?' Harry asked.

Ginny got it.

"The spell! It broke the spell! Harry, you're a fuckin' genius! That's it! If we go into the Chamber of Secrets and find one of the basilisk's fangs, we can use it to break the bubble around Myrtle!"

"And Death dies." Hermione added.

"And what a long strange trip it's been! I can't believe you geniuses didn't figure it out right away! C'mon, what are we waiting for! Like I said before, let's go!" Ron enthused.

"We can't just go into the Chamber of Secrets!" Hermione protested.

"Sure we can. I did it before. And that thing is dead now." Harry added.

"Maybe we ought to put some kind of special kit on, though. An' get some supplies together." Ron suggested.

"That's a good idea. Let's make a list of what we need." Harry agreed.

"Are you both out of your fucking minds? Ginny, what are you doing?" Hermione asked.

"We can't let 'em go down there by themselves, can we? In for a penny, in for a pound. Fuck it, I'm game. We should bring some rope. It's always a good idea to bring some rope…"

Hermione approached the table.

"We'll need to have some kind of shields with mirrors on them, or some kind of protection from the eyes. They're still down there, and, as Harry pointed out, they can still kill us. And we need to get clearance, either from Snape or Dumbledore."

"Clearance my arse!" Harry protested.

"Fuck clearance!" Ron clarified.

"Look you fucking thick Southerners, the whole point of this exercise is that we learn something! And I know you two want to prove you're not a couple of joy boys like Snape made you out to be, but the mistake Ginny and I made was going off doing whatever the fuck we pleased without getting clearance. So we're taking our plan and we're going to see one of 'em. You pick!" Hermione demanded.

"She's got a point, lads." Ginny agreed.

"Dumbledore." Ron voted.

"No, Snape. Dumbledore will never let us do it." Harry countered.

* * *

The four of them sat anxiously on the other side of Snape's desk as he perused the plans they had drawn up, smoking thoughtfully as Harry chain-smoked, nervously.

"You don't have to worry about the eyes. Albus has them. Fawkes brought them to him. Other than that, your reasoning is sound, and you've come to the right conclusion. If it was up to me, I would have sent you lot down into the chamber, but Albus did not approve." Snape replied.

Dumbledore walked actually in from the lab.

"I most certainly do not. You have all been asked to risk your lives many times, and soon you will be called upon to do it again. I don't want to jeopardise your health and well-being over an exercise."

"There's nothing down there anymore but dirt and and an old snakeskin and a book with a tooth in it." Snape grumbled.

"I don't get it. Why aren't we going down there, ourselves? The girls already proved themselves. Now Ron and I have to."

Dumbledore laughed, softly.

"Harry, you fought Voldemort for the first time at ten. You killed a basilisk when you were 12. And you've come back from the brink of death at the hands of one of the most terrible addictions I've ever seen. You don't need to prove anything. And you, Mr. Weasley, everything that Harry has done, everywhere he has gone, you've been at his side. Because Harry is your friend. You don't have to prove anything either. The idea of this exercise was to determine if the four of you had the courage to face Voldemort. Severus and I needed to see if you had the discipline and the intelligence to do so. You've all passed with flying colours. Now, Ron, I believe it's nearly three, and I think someone is waiting for you in the women's bathroom."

Snape opened up his desk and took out a hinged lead-lined box made of solid mithril.

"Weasley, the basilisk fang is in this box. Put these gloves on when you touch it, and whatever you do, no not let the fang touch Myrtle. I want this back…at your first convenience." Snape added.

Ron suddenly realised that they had done it, and Myrtle was going to be free.

He hugged all three of his friends, all at once.

He hugged the headmaster.

He even hugged Snape, who surprised him by ruffling his hair and punching him on the arm.

"Good on you, Weasley. Show her you're the man she thought you were." He said.

"I will. I am. I fucking well am." Ron proclaimed.

He took the box, and hurried on his way.

* * *

Ron made his way to Myrtle's bathroom by quarter of three in the morning.

"There you are, Ron! I though you weren't coming, tonight, either! We only have fifteen minutes. How long has it been since you've slept? Let me get you some water."

"I found the answer, Myrtle. It's in this box. Did you know you're not dead?"

"Of course I'm dead, Ron. Most of the time, I'm a ghost. And if I'm not dead, I would be old. So, I must be dead."

"Ghosts are dead ALL the time, Myrtle. And you can't bring the dead back to life. And you're alive right now."

"I've often wondered about that. What are those rubber gloves for? Don't get me wrong, luv, I'm game, but rubber's a bit too kinky for me."

"Let me explain. You're a sort of suspended animation. I'll give you the short version. Its all involves logic and science and things to give you a headache. I'm just a drummer in a rock band, what do I know? Anyhow, the jist of it is the big lizard didn't kill you because you looked at him through your glasses. But he froze you in a little bubble of the exact minute you died. And you've been floating around in that little bubble, disjointed from the rest of the universe, ever since. Jimmy Page's spell makes the bubble dissolve for awhile, but then it grows right back. Or something. I dunno. The point is, with this basilisk fang, I can break the bubble, since it was the basilisk that put you in the bubble in the first place. When I break the bubble you'll be unfrozen all the time, like you are now, and your life will just go on from where it left off." Ron explained.

"That sound so complicated, and crazy and improbable and stupid, it'll probably work." Myrtle said

"That's what I thought."

As the clock chimed three, and now that he knew what it was, Ron could almost see the bubble sealing Myrtle up inside, making her an insubstantial wraith.

"Stand very still. I don't want this to slip, and cut you. Then you'd be dead for sure."

Ron poked the basilisk fang into what seemed like the thin air of the little glow just around Myrtle's arm.

He quickly put the fang back in the case, put the case on the floor and took off the gloves.

"Well?" he asked.

"Ron, what did you do? The whole universe is getting sucked out through the hole!" Myrtle cried.

To her, it must have been like the whole universe.

Ron heard a snake rattle and hiss, a toilet flush, a bell ring and people talking, and a flash of sunlight that blinded him.

When he could see again, it was five minutes after three, and Myrtle was not a wraith, or a ghost.

She pinched herself.

"It worked! Ron, it worked! I'm free!"

Ron picked her up and twirled her around and hugged her , squealed her as hard as he could.

"I'm all filthy. Let's go up to the prefect's bathroom. And you can give me a bath. Among other things."

For the first time in decades, Myrtle left her bathroom via the door and went to the prefect's bathroom via the stairs.

* * *

The next day, the day before the start of term, Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape passed each other in the hallway.

Albus could not help but notice that Snape was strutting along like a Spinner's End gangster, the way he had when he was a young man.

"Enjoying your holiday, Severus?"

"Very much so, Albus. I'm not sure, but I may even be happy. Maybe when they suss out what me type is, the likes of Granger, some of these silly little birds will leave me alone. And I may be ugly old Snape to their yobbo classmates, but not so ugly I couldn't land the bird they've had their eyes on since fourth year. And Granger seems relieved not to have to keep secrets. I certainly am. What she wants with the likes of me, being from Woolton and all, I'll never know, but I'm not one to question the good fortune of having two beautiful and intelligent woman giving a damn about me in one lifetime. Besides, when I think of the amount of house points I can take from these nimrods for the disrespect they're going to show me over all this, it warms my cold little reptile heart." Snape replied

Dumbledore laughed.

"One of Miss Granger's?"

"Of course."

"And things seem to be going well with Harry."

"They are. He's getting used to being a Snape as well as a Potter. I don't think he remembers far back enough to when I used to look after him when he was a baby. Sometimes, I honestly hope he can't. But he's really starting to think of me as his Old Man, nonetheless. And our enemy is about to suffer a betrayal at our hands. At my hands. The man he's trusted since I was a lad younger than Harry. Not to mention a horrible, painful, disgusting and humiliating death. I am happy. Things haven't looked this good for me in years, Albus." Snape admitted.

"Mr. Weasley certainly is certainly happy, as well. Over the moon might be a better way to put it. Any ideas on how I'm to explain to the students about our sort of new Hufflepuff?"

Snape thought about it.

"Home-schooled up until now?" he suggested.

"That's a good idea, Severus."

"And see to it, Albus, that she gets a contraceptive charm. Or there will very soon be another Weasley in this world."

Dumbledore chuckled.

"I'm sure." He said

* * *

"She's your girlfriend? That new Hufflepuff girl, Myrtle?" Lee Jordan asked Ron.

"Yeah." Ron said, proudly.

"How does a guy like you get a bird like that?"

"It's the mustache. And the sidies. And I'm the drummer in a band." Ron confided.

"Yeah. You and Fred and George. So how's the group going?"

"Myrtle is our new singer. She sounds a lot better than Fred does. I think we're going to be playing again , soon. I'll put flyers up." Ron said, casually.

Myrtle came bouncing across the room.

"Ron, I can't believe it! This is all so easy. I could pass these classes with my eyes shut. I guess it's because I had so much time to learn the material. Hello, Lee."

"Hi, Myrtle."

"I have to go. I'm supposed to eat lunch with Ginny. We have most of our classes together. I'll see you later, okay, Ron?"

"You're not going anywhere until you kiss me."

Lee couldn't believe it. Myrtle just dropped her books on the floor and she kissed Ron like she wasn't going to see him again for a hundred years.

"Down boy," she said to him.

"I'll see to you later."

"You'd better."

Myrtle rushed off.

"Weasley, you are the luckiest motherfucker in this entire school." Lee observed.

Ron was all smiles.

"Luck had nothing to do with it." He said.


	15. Female Trouble & Family Matters

**Chapter Fifteen: Female Trouble & Family Matters**

Everything was coming up roses for everybody else, but Harry realised he had the same problem he'd had before he found out Snape was his Old Man and all the rest of it.

He still didn't know what was going on, and he still knew that Snape and Dumbledore weren't going to tell him.

Thinking on it, though, he knew someone who might.

Someone who had the last Order meeting at his manor.

Harry was fully aware it was reprehensible for him to ask Ginny to do what he was about to ask Ginny to do, but a junkie is a junkie is a junkie even after he's gotten clean, and it didn't bother Harry one bit.

"Ginny, do you still see Malfoy on Thursdays?" he asked.

"Not as often as I used to but, sure. What's the job?"

Harry smiled.

He loved her, he really did.

"I need some information. Can you get it?"

"From Luke? If you've got something more to bargain with that what he's already going to get."

"How about a Thought Box that will show him the death of the man he was hunting down for eighteen years? Over and over as many times as he likes." Harry offered.

"That might be a start. What else 'ave you got?"

Harry thought about it.

"I'm the son of an old friend?" he asked.

Ginny looked at him.

"What's your game, Harry?"

"I know he'll throw me a few tidbits and go right to Snape and tell him I've been snooping. That won't do shit for the old man, but what these Slytherins don't know is that Gryffindors have honour. When Dumbledore finds out that I've been sending you to shag Malfoy to get information out of him that Snape won't give me and Malfoy won't either, and that both of them are going to take the piss and make me look like an arse'ole over it, the Headmaster will be so horrified he'll tell me everything." Harry confided.

Ginny smiled and shook her head, marvelling at the sheer volume of guile and convoluted thought and mind-twisting junkie paranoia that had given birth to such a degenerate scheme.

"I'm in. You really are Snape's son, Harry, you know that, don't you?" she replied.

Harry lit up a fag and smiled.

* * *

***

Remus Lupin sat in his office, bent over a ream of parchment.

He was trying to physically compose his thoughts about what he thought was the complete degradation of anything remotely resembling a sense of morality both at Hogwarts, and in the British Wizarding World in general as the war was drawing to its close.

The Defense Against the Dark Arts professor wasn't a Goody Two-Shoes, and her certainly didn't want to be seen as a hypocrite. After all, he was a young man in the seventies; he'd had more than his fair of sex, drugs and rock & roll. Cheap thrills, cheap booze, cheap women. Very freaky girls who liked to dress all in black coming around close to the full moon, whispering in his ear for him to bite them, bite them, sink his teeth in all the way to their bones.

Not that he ever made them werewolves, bless their freaky hearts. And it was very recently as recently he'd allowed himself to be seduced by his animagus pupil, and he was hands down, the most addicted member of WAND. Coke, speed, smack, sleepers, leapers, Doom, creepers, nitrous, shrooms, acid, pot, hash, you name it, he did it. He'd gone through a punk phase where he mainlined Purple Doom, cocaine and oven cleaner, wore five inch liberty spikes on his otherwise shaved head, pieced his ears, nose & nipples with safety pins and started going around with Muggle birds who were both punks and werewolves.

Well, as they say , it's all fun and games until somebody stabs you in the head with the jagged end of an empty bottle of Southern Comfort and steals your wallet and leaves you to bleed to death in a pay by the hour hotel room.

But if Remus' suicidal flirtations with degeneracy had taught him anything it was that that there were really such things as good and evil, and right and wrong, and there was no harnessing what was evil and wrong to do what was right or good; the twain did not meet.

That simple truth seemed, at the last days of the war, to be utterly lacking. Any sense of even cursory morality had been replaced with a hedonism and nihilism; a brawling free-for-all of amorality where anything goes as long as it goes against Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Society itself seemed to have a sort of Last Days of the Planet feel to it; everybody who wasn't recovering or sober, even square,s were going about drunk and high out of their minds; everybody was spending all their money and skipping work and school and fucking one another indiscriminately.

There would be no consequences, because there would be no world.

Harry and Ginny, and Snape, and to some extent, Hermione and certainly Lucius Malfoy were cheerfully untroubled by the shabby state of their morality. Hermione and Ginny considered themselves realists, Harry and Snape chalked it up to bad childhoods and junkie habits and Malfoy was a wealthy aristocrat and considered himself above such things.

As an Auror who saw the worst the Wizarding World had to offer every day, Tonks' morality was in similarly malleable shape, and such was both convenient and expedient for a group of people so closely enmeshed in the filthiest parts of a very dirty war with a megalomaniacal sexually sadistic perverted psychopath.

Remus felt like he was the only sane man in a mad world. He was a werewolf, traditionally supposed to be the heedless hedonist of heedless hedonists, and he was the one sounding the call? Didn't anybody else think that they were breeding a generation of kill-crazy psychopathic danger junkies at Hogwarts? What if they couldn't adjust to normal life, Harry and Hermione and Ginny and even some of their Slytherin counterparts like Draco, Greg, and Vince? What if they wanted to go on living an outlaw life after the war was over?

What if the entire generation of their peers cheered them on for it?

Even a paragon of decency such as Albus Dumbledore seemed to be slipping. Remus found it hard to believe that the only thing about the death of Oliver Crich at the hands of Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley that seemed to disturb Albus was that the two students had taken matters into their own hands and acted without approval of their so-called superiors.

He wanted to hearken back to better days, to the days of his own youth when good was good and bad was bad, but he hadn't that kind of luxury. Lupin recalled that he and Severus Snape used to get drunk together and the whole matter of James and Lily and Severus, not to mention the maniacal homicidal hatred that Sirius had for Snape.

Was it true about the sins of the fathers being visited onto the sons?

Remus had a son. Was killing Tom Riddle again going to make any difference, or would he come back in Teddy's lifetime? Would someone take Teddy away from him, the way Harry had been taken from Severus? Would Teddy grow up in ignorance and indifference and fall into the same fate as his father, like Harry had?

What if he wasn't there to save Teddy the way Severus saved Harry?

Harry was a brave young man, good a decent, but, like his father, he had much darkness in him. Lupin sat in on a few of the Advanced DADA classes that Snape was teaching to the best students in the fifth, sixth and seventh forms in addition to their regular classes and was somewhat appalled by the subject matter.

The classes were a mixture of traditional defences against the dark arts, combined with Snape's encyclopaedic knowledge of potions, hexes , and even the arcane and occult. Most of the attendees were Dumbledore's Army members, and all of them were over the age of 16.

Under the guise of an elective, Snape was blatantly training his shock troops to kill.

Remus could see the irony in it. Under his grand words about blood purity and mystical union, Lord Voldemort had Severus Snape synthesising and selling drugs, running a distribution network, collecting payments, and enforcing debts. And under his grand words about ridding the Wizarding World of the evil of Lord Voldemort, Albus Dumbledore had Severus Snape preparing teenagers to kill or be killed in the war that was about to envelop all of them.

Snape, however, maintained a conspicuous absence of morality. Not that he'd ever really possessed any in the first place. Snape was raised in a place where you did unto others before they did unto you, and you did what you had to keep yourself and your own safe from harm. Blood was blood, and your people were all you had.

As such, Severus sought to protect his immediate family and the children and young adults entrusted to his care and to bring about the humiliation, doom, and ultimately the death of the man who had destroyed his family. Whether the means he chose to exercise those ends was right did not occur to Snape, or to his protégés. He taught them his simple creed and they accepted it as true, and proceeded from those assumptions

Worse for Lupin, try as he might, he could never cultivate anything deeper than a Machaivellian ends justify the means kind of morality in his own acolyte, Ginny Weasley. In psychiatric terms, it was highly likely that the childhood trauma that psychopath Lucius Malfoy had indirectly subjected her to made her into a psychopath, as well.

Ironically, it was the childhood and adolescent trauma of being raped, tortured, generally degraded and casually tortured that turned Malfoy into a psychopath. And, heaping weird psychosexual irony of top of weird psychosexual irony, the dance of victimisation had formed a bond between the two of them which blossomed into an affair. Try as he might, he couldn't pry Ginny away from her dark lover, and Harry Potter didn't seem to think twice about it once he knew that Malfoy was on "their side."

He was his father's son, that was for sure.

So it was for the highest of lofty goals that Remus jumped at the chance when Severus if he might have Hermione serve her detention for the Crich matter with him, and for Lupin to take Ginny's detention.

Severus wanted the extra time to work with Hermione, building up the arsenal of potions the would need for the last step of The Plan, and he assumed that Remus needed some time to prepare his protégé for her role with the Knights of Albion.

Remus wanted to use the time to make a last ditch plea to Ginny to explain to her how grossly maladaptive, how completely sick and insane her affair with Malfoy was, how he was worried about her losing her mind, her soul, even her humanity to such a dark wizard and such a dark war.

He came to detention with his parchment of notes in his briefcase, but he'd been so occupied with his own angst that he had not been mindful that the full moon was only a few days away.

Even though he had the power to completely control his transformations, Remus could not prevent the physical and emotional effects the rise of the full moon had on him. He hadn't even thought about same until the intoxicatingly familiar scent of the Gryffindor lioness arrived first in his empty classroom, with her a close second.

They were alone; the door was closed.

It could be very easily locked and warded.

Lupin was miserable. He tried to be a good man, a decent man, but it was biology, fucking biology, that always undid him. He tried to think of his wife, whom he loved and to who he was devoted, but it did him no good.

The air was perfumed with the scent of the reckless animagus; he could smell her, he could almost hear the beating of her heart; the wolf in him snapped its jaws and licked its lips and demanded to be allowed out, to roll on the grass and howl at the moon.

Steadfastly, Remus stood behind his desk, wearing it about his loins like an anchor. Mortified, he realised that to Ginny's heightened senses, the sense and the scent of his lust and his confusion must have been palpable in the room.

He looked at her, and she pretended not to notice him.

Mercifully, she chose to ignore it.

Lupin endured the torture as best he could. He was determined to get through this detention period, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to do it again.

"I'm not feeling very well today, Ginny. Too close to the full moon. I think I'll excuse you from detention until next week, after it's passed. Then we'll get something accomplished. Today you can just do your homework." He managed, folding himself into his chair.

"Remus, you're not feeling very well because you're torturing yourself. Why don't you do it? Nobody expects you to be anything more than what you are. I certainly don't." she replied.

"Stay right there! There is right in this world, Ginny and there is wrong. I wish you could realise that."

"I do realise that. But I'll tell you something that's wrong. To betray your own nature. You were brought up in the same C of D (Church of British Druidism) that I was. We're supposed to do what we will as long as we harm none, not do what we can to harm ourselves." Ginny contended.

Remus was saved by the bell when Lucius Malfoy's dour secretary, Mirabella Poe, suddenly made an appearance in the room.

"I'm terribly sorry, Professor Lupin," she drawled in her Southern American accent. "But Minister Malfoy is in his field office, upstairs, and he wants to see Miss Weasley right away. He sends his regrets about interrupting her detention."

Lupin looked at the slight, blond witch with the large hexagonal glasses as if she was some kind of instrument of divine mercy, and Mirabella quickly made her exit from what she perceived as an awkward situation.

Ginny packed up her books.

"Are yuh gonna be awright, Remus?" she asked.

"Yes. I'll be fine."

"You don't look fine. I'm coming back tomorrow whether you like it or not." Ginny told him.

She followed Miss Poe out the door.

Remus sat at his desk and banged his head against the blotter for a few moments, then he rushed out of the room, and he was in the hall, heading for the Potions classroom.

As he flung the door open he hoped he wouldn't catch his degenerate schoolmate in some kind of torrid embrace with the brainy and voluptuous Miss Granger.

Unless Severus was willing to share…

Lupin slapped himself across both sides of the face, twice.

Sure it was close to the full moon, but this was getting ridiculous.

When he burst through the door he walked in only on a room with a few surprised-looking students cleaning cauldrons and flasks while Snape and Granger worked on something at the Professor's desk.

"Er, Professor Snape…Severus…I…"

Snape shook his head.

Remus Lupin's ongoing 19th nervous breakdown, ad nauseum, since 1970.

"Miss Granger, could you take over with this potion for a minute? I expect the rest of you to keep working while I am gone. Anyone who uses by brief a scene as an excuse to do what they like will find another three detentions added onto what they've already got." Snape warned his students.

"It won't be necessary for you to leave, Professor Snape. There's been an emergency at home, Teddy has a fever and I've got to take him to the medi-wizard. Can you take over Miss Weasley's detention when she returns from Lord Malfoys' office?" Lupin lied.

"I think Lord Malfoy is taking over her detention, Professor Lupin. But I will see to it she finishes her detention here, if she returns from his office before the time is up." Snape agreed.

"Thank you." Remus Lupin replied.

He left Hogwarts Castle in a rush, and, leaving his clothes under a rock, fled in his transfigured form into the safety of the forest.

* * *

***

Meanwhile, Ginny walked into the commonly vacant office that Lucius Malfoy only occasionally occupied in a converted torture chamber in the dungeons.

"That will be all, Ms. Poe." Lucius told his secretary, who retired to the antechamber.

"It's so damp in here, Luke. And cold. No wonder you don't spend much time here." Ginny commented.

Ginny made her way across the room and sat on Lord Malfoy's desk, dangling her legs into his lap.

"Are you concerned for my welfare, Luke?" Ginny asked, amused.

"Quite. I haven't seen you for awhile, Poppy. And as long as I was at Hogwarts, I decided to find out why. Are you avoiding me, purposely?"

Malfoy slid his hand up the skirt Ginny wore under her robes.

"Don't you want to kill me, anymore?" he asked.

"What an ugly thing for you to say to me! An' I do owe you for getting' me out of detention with Re-erm, Professor Lupin." Ginny replied.

Malfoy became suddenly serious.

He pulled his hand away, stood up, and began pacing.

"I knew it! I thought you might be with the werewolf. I've told Dumbledore, I don't think you should be alone with Remus Lupin. Especially right before the full moon. He was a weirdo when he was a boy and he's grown up to be completely unstable. He's a dangerous man. You do your detention with Snape, where you're safe." He said, darkly.

"What do you think he'll do? He's a Centurion in the Knights of Albion!"

"Bullshit! I don't care if he's the Doge, himself! He hates being a werewolf, he hates himself for being a werewolf and he looks with contempt on anyone who doesn't hate him or hate his being a werewolf. He's sick in his fucking head. Until the man comes to terms with his own nature, he's liable to do anything. Especially to you. Especially during the full moon. If I had my way, you'd leave the poor crazy bastard alone when you weren't in class, but you're his acolyte and you won't listen. But stay away from him before the full moon!" Malfoy returned.

"Awright, Luke, keep yer trousers on, I'll do me detention with Snape. He always tries to tell me you'll hurt me, too, yunno." Ginny rejoined.

"I certainly will not! I know who I am and what I am and it doesn't trouble me. And so do you. Loony Moony wants to make you a fucked-up potion-popping basket case like he is. I won't have it. It's my job not to have it." Lucius maintained.

"Talk, talk, talk. I thought maybe you called me up here for something interesting. I might as well go to the library and finish me Potions homework." Ginny complained.

Actually, Malfoy had called her to his office to get her away from Loony Moony, and he really didn't have anything else in mind, but now that she mentioned it, a bit of fun, a little preview of the evening's festivities might be a fine idea.

He sat back down in his chair and pulled Ginny into his lap.

"What did you have in mind?" he asked.

* * *

***

After detentions were over, Snape dismissed all the students, including Hermione.

"Snape, where are you going? Tomorrow's a school holiday for Helga Hufflepuff's birthday, so we've got along weekend, remember? Our night off. You know, when we're actually not working and we can go out in the world and get out of the fucking dungeon, for once? I thought we were going to go home for the week-end and go see the new James Bond movie and go to your local and things." Hermione protested

"We'll have plenty of weekend left if we go tomorrow. Fuck, we'll get crazy and take the whole fucking weekend off! I'm sorry, Granger, but I have to go find Loony Moony and make sure he doesn't do himself a mischief. You apparate home if you want to. I'll meet you at me local in the morning for breakfast. Don't wait up for me." Snape explained.

It was only after he was gone in a cloud of cigarette smoke and curses that Hermione realised he meant Remus Lupin.

She wandered into the Gryffindor common room and found Harry sitting in front of the fire, smoking and looking dejected.

"I'm going home for the week-end. You want to come over and watch telly and go to the flicks?" Hermione asked.

Harry brightened up immediately.

"Sure! I can stop off and see me family. Ellie owled me to say they made up a room for me in their house in case I want to stay there over the summer. I'll get to see it." He said.

"Gear. We'll clock off in the Headmaster's office and get the fuck out of here." Hermione decided.

* * *

***

While Harry and Hermione spent the early evening in the Granger's spacious living room, having home-made Shepherd's Pie for dinner and watching movies on John Granger's massive telly, Snape put on his greatcoat and sallied forth into the howling winds, freezing temperatures, and blowing and drifting snow of the miserable and bitter January night to look for Remus Lupin, aka Loony Moony.

He found the DADA professor's clothes along the way and soon found Remus in his werewolf form, sitting in a very human attitude on a log, with his head in his hands.

"Oh for fuck's sake, Remus, this isn't the bleedin' Creature Feature! I refuse to carry on a conversation with you whilst you do your Lon Chaney." Snape told him.

"I don't want to be a man right now." Remus said.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Lupin! I want to be a man right now. It's freezing out here, and I could be dead before spring comes! I'm supposed to be home in the 'Pool tonight, having home-made Shepherd's Pie at Granger's house. I was planning on talking her to the flicks and then going 'ome and cozy up in me bed to be a man with a certain teenage witch I know whose tits are the only part of her body big as her brains. So you'd best fuck off out of this bollocks and tell me what's going on!" Snape snapped

Remus transformed, and put his clothes back on.

Snape produced a carton of cigarettes, a bag of crisps and two bottles of ginger beer from under his greatcoat.

"Good. Now, it's about time you and I had a little talk." He said.

Lupin was just bursting at the seams to have a little talk with anybody.

He tore into the first packet of fags and his diatribe with alacrity.

"Snape, did it ever occur to you that we are throwing away the baby with the bathwater? I mean, Sibyl is a wonderful woman and a fine teacher, and lovely person but is she really the best of sources? What if we can't actually, permanently, totally kill Voldemort this time, either? Look at us. We're wreckage, you and I. We were wreckage when we were children younger than the children we've taught to kill the way we were taught to kill. Albus sold us on our own downfall on the idea that our children could have a better life. Your son hasn't. Maybe mine won't either. I don't want to have to teach my son to be a mercenary. Hell, I don't want to fucking die, or have my wife die and have strangers have to teach me son to be a mercenary. And even if this does end, what's the cost? Another generation of wreckage? What's the fucking point?" Lupin insisted.

"Remus, do you really think when I sat Harry on me knee when he was a baby, down there in the dungeon and watched telly with him and changed his nappies and gave him Twix bars to eat that I envisioned this future for any of us? I don't like it any more than you do. Here we are, you and me, twenty odd years older and no better off than when we was kids, chain-smoking nervous wrecks. Maybe Harry and Hermione and the Weasleys and the rest of 'em will end up the same way. But the idea is that we teach them to kill so we don't have to watch them die. Tom's only a man, Remus. I know him better than any other poor bastard what walks, crawls or flies along the Earth, and he's the devil's own, but he's still just a man, and any man can die, if you know how to kill him. I do. And I will. But you can't go all soft and squidgy on me just now. Look, I know what a wreck you are, Remus. I'm the man who mixes up your psychiatric potions because they're too complex for them to fill at St. Mungo's. And I can't say I fault you for it. After all of this is over, have a nervous breakdown. By all fuckin' means. I may just join you, and we'll be six months in St. Mungo's in our pyjamas chain-smoking and catching up on our reading and writing out next year's lesson plans, swilling happy juice from a vial. Insanity's a kick I haven't tried. But right now, you've got to keep your shit together. And for fuck's sake, don't go getting your dick all mixed in with your morals. If you've fucked somebody you ought not to have fucked, well, fuck her again, you may be dead next month. Then go home, bounce your baby on your knee, take a shower, brush your teeth and kiss your wife. You can confess to her later. This just may be the end of everything, Remus. I think things will go well for our side, but if they don't, well, now's your last chance to get it while you can." Snape advised.

Lupin laughed to himself, and opened up another packet of fags.

"Spoken like a true Slytherin. Don't you and Luke have the slightest twinge of conscience over violating these young girls?" he sniffed, self-righteously lighting up.

Snape actually laughed, for quite a long period of time

"I dunno, Remus. The way I hear it you're the one who's been violated. What does a man say to a red-headed witch with a hair trigger temper who can turn herself into a lioness whose hobbies are mayhem and ultraviolence? No thank you? Not unless you want to keep your balls. They don't call her the Killer Queen just because it sounds good." He replied.

That got Lupin laughing, which made Snape think he'd turn out alright.

"I might as well have another smoke. Like as not I won't live long enough to worry about emphysema." Remus said.

"That's the spirit. Smoke fast, even I'm getting cold." Snape encouraged him.

* * *

***

It had been about a month since Ginny had attended her regular Thursday meeting at Malfoy Manor, what with the Crich affair and the holidays and the Myrtle exercise, but Luke hadn't abandoned the enterprise.

Following their meeting regarding her welfare in his Hogwarts office, Ginny accompanied Lord Malfoy to a rather nice if sort of dodgy restaurant in Knockturn Alley for dinner, and then back to his Manor.

Another winter found her cloak even more threadbare, her hat far rattier and she shoved her hands in her pockets to keep them from freezing as they walked through the freezing night.

In the room where they usually met, Ginny discovered that Luke had even bought her a present for Christmas.

She looked at the box like something evil was going to jump out of it.

"We didn't exchange gifts last year." She said, warily.

"No. Seeing as how last year you still weren't sure if you were going to kill me or not, I didn't think it would be appropriate. But now that we're all on the same side, and I'm fairly sure you won't be cutting my throat at the point of orgasm any time soon, I decided, why not. It's customary for a man to spoil his deadly young mistress. Besides, I am obscenely wealthy, and you are obscenely poor."

The box was tastefully wrapped in Gryffindor colours, and proved to contain a dark red velvet cape with a fur lining and hood, and gloves to match.

It was just what she needed.

Harry wanted to buy her a new cape but she wouldn't take his money.

"Luke, I can't accept this. I don't want your money."

"But this isn't my money, it's a gift. I can't return it. I had it made to measure, especially for you. My house elves worked on this for months. You don't want to break their little hearts, do you? Take it. We can't have you dying of pneumonia before all your dreams of mayhem and ultraviolence come true, can we?" Malfoy purred.

Just what she needed and infused with powerful house elf magic.

"How do I know we're really on the same side, and you're not just trying to welch on our agreement?" Ginny asked.

"Poppy, you know what Tom Riddle did to me, and to Narcissa, and what he wanted to do to Draco. To add insult to injury, he tried to steal my land, my manor, and my birthright. Why would a Slytherin son-of-a-bitch like me remain loyal to a man like that?" Malfoy asked.

Ginny fell back on the old standby; if he tried anything she could tear him to bits in a heartbeat.

"I suppose you want me to try it on without me kit on underneath?" she asked.

"And that can be your Christmas gift to me." Malfoy suggested.

The cape was back in its box and Ginny's kit was all around the room and she and Luke lay in the big green and black bed, and she was having a good time until she remembered Harry's proposal.

"Harry's got some mad scheme that if you know something Snape knows that he's not supposed to know you'll tell him and then tell Snape and…I dunno, it's all his crazy junkie paranoia."

"Really? What does he propose to offer me in exchange for betraying my oldest and dearest friend?" Malfoy asked.

Ginny told him about the Thought Box.

"I see. I've had one made up for me professionally. You can tell Mr. Potter that his old man is too smart for him. I only know my part of the Plan. I don't know the specifics of the Ministry Mutiny and nor do I wish to. You were there, why don't you tell him?" Luke suggested.

"Harry knows I'll keep schtum. Hermione, too."

"I'm sure he'll find a way to weasel his path to the truth. I'm more concerned about you. You can put on your new Red Riding Hood cape and play games with the Big Bad Wolf, but I wouldn't if I were you. Remus Lupin has an overdeveloped sense of middle-class morality, and I'd hate to see him pollute your Machiavellian mind with his tiresome moralising any further than he already has."

"Remus is married."

"So am I."

"He doesn't want to give in to temptation."

"Which makes it all the more palatable to you to seduce him. Don't. The last thing you want to do is encourage the man. If he gets some mad idea in his head about saving you by damning you and biting you, you'll be a werewolf until the day you die." Malfoy warned.

Ginny sighed.

"Things used to be a lot simpler, didn't they, Luke? You were the bad guy and I was the good guy and I was going to off you when I got tired of shagging you, and Harry was me best mate and Remus was a bit of fun. Now I've gone and fallen in love with Harry and you and I are on the same side and I wish I'd never done the old what a big so and so you have with Remus." She said.

"Potter's not about to do you any harm, he's a reasonable young man, like his father. Just steer clear of the werewolf. I didn't tell you this, but we don't call him Loony Moony for nothing. The man's a walking pharmacy. Four or five different psychiatric potions. And more than one long stay in St. Mungo's. The man is mad. You'd best stick with Potter and I, if you know what's good for you. And if it makes you feel better, Poppy, you can off me any time you like."

"I don't want to. I'm not half tired of shagging you, yet."

"Good. Now, just to keep things lively, why don't you tell Potter that his father has a pensieve in his desk. It's disguised as an ordinary student's cauldron."

Ginny wondered if Snape had told him to tell her about the cauldron, or if Malfoy just couldn't resist the temptation to stir up some shit.

She decided not to ask.

* * *

***

Tonks was surprised when she got home from work and her father, Ted, was still there, watching some crime show with Robson Green in it on telly.

"Didn't Remus come 'ome? I told 'im I was workin' late." Tonks asked.

"No. I put Teddy to bed, 'e was good as gold, as usual. I brought Chinese take away, there's a plate on warm in the stove for you. One for Remus, too, when he gets 'ome." Ted answered.

Tonks checked on her son, changed her clothes and then got her dinner and sat down with Ted.

The movie was just about over when Remus came in, looking quite the worse for wear.

He mumbled something about having a hard day and going to lie down and went directly to the bedroom and closed the door.

Tonks began changing channels with her wand.

"Well, I'll be leaving now. You married 'im, Dora, an yuh knew what you was gettin' into. Turn the telly off and find out what's going on." Ted suggested.

Tonks watched about another half hour of telly after her father left.

"Remus, you ain't ung yourself, 'ave you? Remus? Remus, I don't give a rabbit's fuck if you've been tempted to the occasion of sin by one of your students, and you know the one I mean!"

"I didn't do it."

"Good on you. Come out and eat your dinner."

Remus shuffled out of the bedroom, looking somewhat teary-eyed and rumpled.

"I don't think I can take this. I told you not to marry a broken down old man like me."

"You really didn't do it?" Tonks asked.

"No."

Lupin felt like he was on the thin edge of a nervous breakdown. It was all too much for him. And how could he ever make Tonks understand what he went through, every day of his life?

Especially right before the full moon.

"So? Do you think I'd care if you done? Well, I wouldn't. I know it's 'ard for you, Remus. But you make it 'arder, tryin' to act like an ordinary man when you ain't. You're a werewolf. You're a goddamn Centurion in the Knights of Albion, you wouldn't be one if you wasn't a werewolf, would you? So be a werewolf. Don't be ashamed, be proud. I'm proud of you that you're a werewolf. I fell in love with all of you, Remus. Not in spite of you bein' a werewolf, maybe because you was a werewolf. You're different from other blokes. Some of you're werewolf traits are some of the things I like best about you. Wot makes you think all the other werewolves are gonna follow you into this war if you're ashamed of what you are? That ain't gonna give 'em no confidence. For fuck's sake, Remus, it's only sex. If you and your animagus protégé get all hot and bothered over each other and she ends up on the end of it now and again, its' no reason for you to take the bridge." Tonks told him.

"No. But as a grown man, it's my responsibility to try to be mature and do the right thing. Werewolf or no, and full moon notwithstanding." Remus insisted.

He wondered if she really meant it about some of his werewolf traits.

"That's wot I love about you, Remus. Nobody else in this war 'as got any kind of moral compass. Just you. Me knight, I mean, me centurion in shining armour."

"What werewolf traits do you mean?"

"I dunno. The ones that make you seem like more of a man. You're hairier, and hornier, and stronger than any other bloke I ever met. You don't get fat, you don't get tired, you're not afraid of anything. That and you can tell me exactly what me dog is saying and you can smell a good Chinese restaurant from a mile off. What's not to like? Din'cher never 'ear of animal magnetism?" Tonks replied.

"I never thought of it that way."

"That's because you 'ate yourself and you love to torture yourself, so. I wish you wouldn't. So, then, me brave Centurian in shining armour, what colour would you like your lady fair's hair to be tonight? Fancy a blond? Redhead? Something in a blue to match your balls? Poor Remus. It ain't easy bein' the only one who knows right from wrong."

Remus smiled.

Virtue was it's own reward.

"Surprise me." He said.

* * *

***

His frozen encounter with Remus Lupin's mental health caused Snape to have to miss dinner, and eat leftovers in the dungeon, which put him in quite a rotten mood.

Then he caught some lip from a Ravenclaw 5th year who was out in the halls after curfew when he did his rounds. She was behaving like a jealous girlfriend; she must have been one of the members of the newly reconstituted Church of Severus Snape, Sex God.

He took ten points from Ravenclaw and gave her three days of detention.

Then, when he settled in to watch a little telly, the rotten weather interfered with his reception, something which not even magic could help.

Therefore, he decided to just go home for the night. It was getting close to eleven, his Mum and Da wouldn't be asleep yet; and he might be able to convince Da to do a fry up.

He apparated at the public apparition point closest to his parents' street, and, smoking and scowling all the way, he trundled home.

He was trying to work through his mother and grandfather's elaborate network of wards and passwords when his grandfather opened the door.

"He made it! Come in, Sev, we're just having dinner."

"Dinner? It's nearly midnight."

"We were waiting for you."

To Snape's surprise, everyone in his whole family were all in the parlour, in front of the telly, propped up in front of sundry TV trays. His grandparents, his parents, Harry, and even Hermione.

There was a space between Harry and Hermione where Snape supposed he was meant to sit, and he quietly sat down between the two of them.

"What are we having?" he asked.

"Our Toby's doing a fry-up." Hermione answered.

"Suits me. _Accio_ remote control. Mum, turn this shite off. I hate these fucking BBC costume bullshit movies."

"If you turn that channel, Severus, I will change you into a blast-ended skrewt. For a week." Eileen told him.

* * *

***

Hermione rolled over in the narrow bed and then rolled over again, entangling herself in the old green and black patchwork duvet made from many different scraps of many kinds of material.

"Snape?" she asked.

He was otherwise occupied, sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, smoking, staring at the tiny, black and white flickering television in the dark without really watching it.

"Does being in this room bring back bad memories?" she finally asked.

"No, Granger. I was happy here, in a way, when I was a child. I never hated Mum and Da, and they never hated me. Things just were…the way they were. It was life. And life was awful, and brutal, but it was simple. I knew what was expected of me, and I knew what to expect. All that ended once I went to Hogwarts. And met Tom Riddle." Hermione untangled herself from the covers, and went and sat with Snape at the foot of the bed.

She was also at a loss for quite what she should do. It was times like these when she questioned her decision to have thrown in her lot with a grown man in his thirties, let alone a complicated bloke like Severus Snape. She had always been mature for her age, and since she was, Hermione knew that as an 18 year old student she couldn't put herself in the place of her 35 year old professor who had more responsibilities than any wizard should.

It would have been easy to make excuses, dress and leave, return to Hogwarts, bitching to herself about not getting any that night. But Hermione wasn't some silly bint with romantic delusions of grandeur who didn't know her arse from her elbow; she was already a seasoned, battle-tested, war-hardened soldier, and she was Snape's apprentice, his lover, and his friend.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

She sat with him, and waited for him to continue.

"He could have been my father. My mother left school, left everything of promise, married the first man seemed to love her even though she was a vicious junkie, and she tried to purge herself of him. I suppose the Christians were onto something when they said that the Devil's cock was very cold and his slime lies in your womb, forever. He's always treated me like I was his son. He always asks me about my mother. He loves us both, in his way. The most horrible thing about Tom is that he's not a snake-faced comic opera villain bent on Neo-Nazi style domination. He's a man. A cold, ruthless, psychopathic sadist monster of a man, whose true plans for the Wizarding World are far more horrible than the line he feeds to his pureblood flunkies. I wish I was like most of his enemies. I wish I neither owed him nor knew him; I wish I didn't know the truth." Snape mused.

Amongst the younger members of the Order of the Phoenix, Hermione Granger alone knew Tom Riddle's true nature and his true plan; as heavy a burden as it was, it wasn't as heavy as the one Snape bore.

It would be easier to bear the betrayal of a cruel and inhuman overlord who murdered the woman you loved, degraded and molested and tortured your best friend, made you into his drug-brewing thug-in chief and left-hand wizards out of megalomaniacal indifference. Far easier than it would be to suffer at the hands of an evil, twisted, methodical tyrant who treated you with kindness, mentored you and nurtured you like a son, and visited horrors upon you because, in his psychopathic mind, he had your best interests at heart.

"Granger, I am the Antichrist. Tom Riddle might as well be my father; I came from the womb of the woman he had earmarked to be the Queen of Hell. She was polluted, I am polluted. Like my mother always used to say I am Rosemary's Baby. I'm the Devil's own son. Even when he's dead, I'll never be free." Snape said.

"When he dies, Severus, all his evil dies with him. You've never been free, you can't imagine what it will be like, that's all. But soon, you will be. Because of your son. Your son is The Hero, so that makes you The King. Not the Devil. Well, maybe the Horned King. The Great God Pan." Hermione added, teasing him a bit, at the end.

Snape lay back in the bed and pulled the covers up to his chin.

Hermione lay down beside him.

They lay very quietly in the bed together for awhile, and then she could feel Snape's breath on her ear, and she crooked her leg over his as he leaned across her, his fine black hair falling into her face.

Snape was, after all, a Sex Magus of the Third Degree, one of only a hundred in all of the British Isles, a master magus of an ancient and mystical order that was as old as Britannia, itself. Add to that he was a dark wizard and a complicated man, and sometimes having a shag with him wasn't just having a shag.

Certainly not this time, as Hermione lay trying to catch her breath, with the shadows of Snape's magus tattoos slowly fading from her body, feeling every nerve in her body warm and tingling and crackling, with the heavy scent of magick and sex in the air.

She was almost asleep when Snape finally spoke, as he draped the abandoned and tangled duvet over both of them, and smoothed it out.

"When this war is over, Hermione, I'm going to buy a house of me own. Right here. On this street. The one at the end, by the dead end. The one that some idiot put purple vinyl siding all over. I'm going to get the fuck out of those dungeons I've lived in since I was your age. Mind, I'll live in the sun like a man, in my own house, in my own city, and I'll never go back to those fucking dungeons. I'll get some colour in me face; like I used to have when I was a young man, and Lily was still alive. Very soon. Before the end of the semester. When I'm free." He said.

"I like that house. We can change the siding. We can make it red and gold and green and black. In sections, yunno? Maybe I can live there with you, Sev." Hermione replied.

"You and me and Harry. And Zeppelin and Crookshanks. What the hell, we'll buy a fucking dog, as well." Snape replied

Hermione laughed, and Snape didn't say anything else.

Slowly, she drifted off to sleep.

He lay awake for awhile, holding Hermione in his arms.

This is what it would be like to be free. Lying in bed with his woman, his son sleeping peacefully in the room next door, and he could look out the window and see the sky, like a real man, not a bat in a dungeon.

He lit a cigarette and was smoking it, thoughtfully when the door opened a crack.

"Severus, put that fag out and go to sleep. It's after three."

"Grand, I'm a grown man. You can't tell me to put out me fag and go to bed." Snape protested.

"Yes I can. I just did. Now put that fag out, and go to sleep." Aphrodite instructed.

Snape put out his fag and his grandmother continued on her way to bed.

"Don't worry, Snape. I said "shit" in front of me Grand on Chrimble, and she made me go to me room for a fifteen-minute time-out. I went, too." Hermione offered.

"Shut your gob, and go to sleep, Granger." Snape replied.

Hermione chuckled a little and went back to sleep.

Oddly enough, Snape fell asleep, too.

* * *

***

There was, however, a creature still stirring in the Snape-Prince house, under the rather disapproving eye of Gawaine, the family owl. He was a Great Grey Owl, and the biggest owl that Harry had ever seen.

Hedwig looked impressed.

"I'm waiting for a message." Harry explained to the owls, as he paced the small owlery in the corner of the attic.

Hedwig hooted softly and flew over to the window.

"I hope he makes it, too."

However, neither ran nor snow nor sleet nor hail, most of which fell on that miserable January night, could keep Pigwidegeon the Hyperactive from completing his quest.

He did a few victory laps around the attic, hooting madly before he delivered the parchment Harry had been waiting for.

In as dignified a manner as possible, Gawaine made a spot for Pigwidegeon to roost, and Hedwig put her wings around him, trying to warm up the little owl, and calm him down.

Harry quickly read the scrap of parchment, and then, before the rather bemused eyes of the owls, consumed it, making faces as he chewed.

_Harry,_

_Luke told me Snape has a pensieve in his desk drawer. It's disguised as an ordinary student cauldron. That's the most you're going to get. I don't know if this is part of the Master Plan, or if Malfoy just wants to stir up the shit, but that's all I've got. _

_Ginny._

_P.S. Eat this note, just in case._

Harry thought about it. He could sneak off to Hogwarts while everybody was asleep, look into the Old Man's pensieve, sneak back by morning and no one would be the wiser. It was the perfect setup.

Harry put on his army surplus parka and his hat and gloves. He pulled the Firebolt from the spot behind an old trunk where he had hidden it, and opened the tiny attic window.

"Engorgio!" he directed the window, and flew out when it was big enough for him to get through. Then, he closed and locked the window and flew off into the cold and snowy night sky.

"Definitely one of ours. A real Snape-Prince. Out of his fucking mind." Gawaine hooted to Hedwig.

"I think I'd best fly with him, in case he runs into trouble. I can see in the dark better than he can. Would you open the window, Gawaine?" Hedwig replied.

"I wanna go! Me too! Me too! I'm ready! I'm always fuckin' ready!" Pig hooted, madly.

"You'll stay right 'ere and like it, shorty. I'll get the window for you, my dear. An' I look after the little one."

Gawaine unlatched the window for Hedwig, and then closed it after she was gone.

"You got anything to eat around here, mate?" Pig asked.

"There's a mouse lives in that hole over there behind the trunk. It'll give you summat to do." Gawaine suggested.

Pig zoomed across the attic as Gawaine closed his eyes.

"Lovely. The girl leaves and I get stuck with the spastic. Oh well. Sing as you go." He hooted, softly, swivelling his great feathered head in dismay.


	16. Truth and Consequences

**Chapter Sixteen: Truth and Consequences**

_(Author's Note: For those of you who want to know more about what's going on with Ginny and Lucius Malfoy, check out "Killer Queen" under Ginny W. and Harry P. For those of you who become interested in the pieces of the past of Snape, Lily, James and the Marauders, visit "Diamonds and Rust: Wizarding in the Seventies" under Severus S. and Lily P.)_

Harry snuck into Hogwarts as quietly as he'd often snuck out of it in the wee hours of the morning.

He made his way to the dungeons in quite a casual fashion, and didn't let the fact that he didn't know the Old Man's passwords, nor how to remove his paranoiac complement of wards bother him.

Hermione had taught him a foolproof Skeleton Key spell, one Snape had taught her, a spell of his very own device. Snape was hoist by his own petard in his absence, because the spell worked, well, like a charm, on his front door, his office door, and his desk drawer.

Harry paused a moment and thought about the chest in the bedroom that was almost assuredly the Old Man's Super Secret Porny Stash, in which his hallowed collection of 70's pornies and vintage Bad Witches lay. One of which, supposedly, contained a full-colour and extraordinarily salacious layout of Arabella Baxter, before she went undercover as the world's biggest prude.

Considering that Harry was mulling over accepting her offer to be her Acolyte for purposes of his training to be an Initiate in the Discipline of Sex Magick, he wanted to see just what it was he'd be getting himself into.

Harry decided, however, that there would be time for all that later, and just to get to the business at hand.

He found the cauldron with the familiar silvery-milky material in it, and put it on Snape's desk.

Settling into his father's chair, Harry looked into the swirling silvery soup inside the cauldron.

He was not fated, however, to see what he hoped to see.

***

The dirtiest part of the great and muddy Mersey practically ran right through the tiny, crowded-in backyard of a ramshackle house. The crumbling ruin was surrounded by other houses just as sloping, ancient, and untidy.

The Spinner's End estate wasn't just a neighbourhood of the working class or the even the poor. It was a real low down sort of place, the kind of place that nice middle-class people who thought their taxes were too high frequently got the horrors about.

It's citizens were the kind of people that middle class people get the horrors about. Drunks, junkies, criminals, prostitutes and the like, living eternally on the dole, on the fiddle, and on the fringes of society in wretched half bombed-out slums un-repaired since World War II or before. Endless teeming generations living in drunken, drug-addled squalor, producing, ignoring and abusing their unfortunate offspring, who, if they were not beaten to death or succumbed to disease grew up to be just like them.

But it was the only home the stringy-haired, dirty little boy of about seven or eight in trainers held together with tape, dressed in a tatty wizard's robe that was too big for him and a stained pair of old jeans knew, and he was well-adapted to it.

There was a fence between the back garden and the river, but it was easy enough for a little boy to climb over. He made his way over the fence, took off his shoes and his robe, rolled up his cuffs and waded into the thick black muck that was riverbed when the river was at high tide.

He had a sack in his hand, and he picked through the mire, occasionally dropping things into the sack.

Every once in awahile he wiped his muddy hand on his pants, and brushed the hair out of his eyes, or pushed his National Health round specs, which were held together with tape, up his long hawk-like nose.

One eye was purple and swollen shut, and every once in awhile, his nose would drip blood a little and he would wipe it.

The boy jumped when the back door of the house slammed shut.

Tobias Snape strode into the sunlight, squinting. His furry barrel chest was bare, and his red hair was unkempt. He had a split lip and two of his fingers were taped together, but the great oxlike slab of a Scotsman seemed none the worse for wear, striding into his back garden dressed in only one of three threadbare kilts that he owned, with a sackful of cans of beer tucked under his arm.

It was the middle of the day, and a workday, but Tobias was one the dole, and worked only piecemeal, as a labourer down at the docks. He and his wife were both degenerate alcoholics, but of the two Tobias was more functional, and it was up to him, in that capacity, to do what he could to look after his young son, and, sometimes his wife, as well.

He picked up an overturned patio chair, and another which didn't match, and sat down in one of them.

"Sev! There ye are lad! Quit pickin through that mud and come up and sit wi' yer old man."

"You ain't mad at me, are ye, Da?" his son called back, warily.

"Sure I ain't! Dinna worry! I ain't off on a tear. C'mon."

That was good enough for the boy. Tobias was only violent when he was on a drunk. He was always drunk, but only dangerous when on a weeklong bender kind of drunk. Which was more than young Severus could say for his mother. Eileen Snape was usually drunk, as well, but she was also a junkie, and a bit mad. You never knew when she was going to be nice or go off. And whether she hit you or hexed you, it was no fun.

Covered in mud, Snape made his way up the bank, and climbed over the fence with his sack.

"Look at all this stuff, Da." He chirped.

"Put that dirty sack o shite down, boy! Look at ye, ye're all covered in filth! Haven't you any clean clothes? I gave yer mother money for food and to go to the laundrette last night before I left."

Severus shook his head.

"Just one more shirt. Mum went out right after you done. When she come back, she went in the kitchen and fixed. I guess she spent all the money on smack. I'm hungry, Da." The boy reported.

"Fuckin' whore! You stay here a minute, Sev." Tobias thundered

Severus sat on the ground, going through his treasures, oblivious to the sounds of fighting and screaming in the house. He also paid no attention to the crash of a body falling to the ground, or the flash of blue light.

Young Sev was used to it.

His parents' life was an endless rotation of drinking, fighting and shagging; they were always doing one or the other or some combination, usually with rock records blaring all the while. They were a bit mad, both if them, and he supposed, so he would be, too, when he grew up. Sev tried his best to get out of the way so that he caught as little of the fallout as he could. And when they were reasonably sane and sober, his parents appeared to, in some crazy way, love him, and each other.

He considered himself more fortunate than some of the other neighbourhood kids; at least his violent parents didn't hate him, and hate each other, and his Da worked some of the time.

Tobias strode out again, burning leeches off his chest with the end of his fag and swearing.

His split lip had been re-opened.

"The next time I gi' you money for food an' such, don't you fuckin' shoot it up yer arm!" Tobias yelled as he sat down in the chair.

Dressed in a witch's robe with nothing on under it, Eileen Snape followed him out the door. She was tall, black-haired and painfully thin where she had once been willowy, and had regained only the ghost of her beauty under the ravages of booze and cheap street skag cut with strychnine and baking soda.

Sporting a fresh black eye, she pulled up another chair.

"I knew I was going to sell some potions later on today, I would have made the money up, Toby. But you're right, I suppose." She agreed.

"Still, next time you'd better ask me a bit more nicely, or I'll hex you into the next decade!" Eillen finished.

Tobias was having some difficulty with the leeches; every time he burned one off another one grew back in a different place.

"Goddamnit, Ellie, this is worse than a bit of a shiner!" he cried.

Eileen handed her wand to her son, chuckling.

"Do you remember how to stop the leech hex, Sev?" she asked.

"I think so." Severus replied.

"Good. Fix Daddy." Eileen encouraged.

Sev gave his mother back her wand, and slyly drew one out of the robe he'd been wearing, pointed the wand at his father and said something in a language Tobias didn't understand, and the leeches disappeared.

"Where did you get that, Sev?" Eileen asked.

"I found it in the river. Lookit this, Da. Fink it's a toy truck. It's all busted up, though."

"So it is. Give that here, lad. I'll fix it up for yer, make it go. Awright, then, urf wi' those Levis."

"But Da…"

"No buts!"

Snape stripped down to his greying y-fronts and Tobias sprayed the garden hose over him.

Snape giggled and Tobias laughed his booming laugh.

Eileen went into the house and came up with a disreputable towel, with which young Snape dried himself.

"Lemme see yer eye."

"S'not so bad."

"Aww, shite. My old man, Sev, he used to get drunk and beat the shite out of me. He were a wicked old bastard, and I was glad to see the back of 'im. We was lucky, Mum and I that the Nazi's got him. She dinna think so, though. Bastard got 'imself killed and took Mum with him. He hated me an' I felt tha same. But I dinna hate ye, lad. Ellie, I don't hate you, neither. But I go mad when I'm on a bender. It's like I ain't meself. I'm sorry, I am. I ought ter go back to sea, gi' away from the both of you." Tobias said, ruefully.

"No, Da! Don't go!" Sev cried.

"It's alright, Sev. Da's not going anywhere. Toby, stay here with Sev and I. We need each other. All three of us. You know I understand you." Eileen volunteered, reaching for Tobias' hand.

They both looked worriedly at their son, who was too young to understand.

He was pointing his wand and some broken things in his sack.

"Reparo! Reparo! Reparo!"

Tobias opened up two beers and handed one to his wife.

"Have a sip, lad. Did yer nose stop gushing from yer Mum's nosebleed hex?"

"Mostly."

Tobias took the can back from his son.

"Good."

He pulled something out from under the chair.

It was a brown paper bag.

"Here ye are, Sev. I bought these for yer."

Snape opened the bag.

It had a stack of records in it. The Beatles, Cream, the Who, Small Faces, Rolling Stones, there had to be about twenty records in it. LP's too.

"Fuck me! Where did you get these, Da?" young Snape squeaked.

"Won 'em last night. You go take a bath and Mum will find you some clean clothes. Play them records good an' loud an piss off that old cunt Jim Richmond next door. When ye're all ready to go, we'll go to the shops and the laundrette. Okay?"

Severus carefully scourgified his sack and his repaired treasures and put them away.

"Okay." He said.

Eileen found her son some clean clothes and he took a bath, got dressed and came out in some clean but still tatty-looking clothes, carrying a portable record player.

He felt around in the pockets of his jacket.

"Lose your smokes?" Tobias asked his son.

"Yeah." Snape piped.

"'Ave one of Dad's."

Tobias cracked open three more beers. He handed one to his son as the sounds of "Disraeli Gears" filled the air.

"Don't let him have a whole beer, Toby! Sev, you only drink half of that. I'll put some tinfoil on it and you can have the rest later. Did you see him do his spells, Toby? He does spells at a third year level and he hasn't even been to school. He's a genius." Eileen bragged.

"Takes after you, Ellie." Tobias agreed.

The cosy family moment was interrupted by a cry from the house next door.

"Turn that shit off you little prick!"

"Shut tha fuck up, Richmond, ya lousy cunt! Or I'll come over there an bust wot teeth ya got left outa yer fuckin' raddled old junkie head!" Tobias thundered.

The voice fell silent.

"An' fuck you!" Little Snape yelled.

He puffed on his fag and had another sip of beer.

Big Snape ruffled his hair, affectionately.

"That's me boy!" he said.

***

Harry was thankful when the terrible, tragic, and yet oddly touching slum scene faded to a more familiar one; the grounds of Hogwarts.

Harry recognised his father, his godfather, and Remus Lupin.

Peter Pettigrew was lurking around behind James and Sirius, as well.

The Old Man was there, too.

He was older now, much older, about 15 or 16, and his hair hung well past his shoulders, down to the middle of his back.

He was kitted out like a real hard nut. He had on these skin-tight bellbottom black Levis and snakeskin engineer's boots, and a big skull and crossbones buckle on his studded belt. Harry recognised the Who tee shirt he was wearing, Snape still had it, but he was also wearing a heavily studded leather vest with a ferocious version of the Slytherin crest on the back. His long, skinny arms were already bristling with wiry muscle and tattoos.

And tracks.

There was a mad look in his black eyes, his skin looked more sallow than pale, and had a grey and papery look to it.

He was clenching and unclenching his blue-knuckled fists, like he was about to really fuck somebody up.

He was obviously drunk, and probably high, too.

"So what was it you wanted to see us about, Snivellus?" Sirius taunted him.

"I hope you lot had a lovely time, making me look like a right cunt in front of the whole school. Do you think I really care if everyone knows me y-fronts 'ave seen better days? I 'ardly wear them, and I wouldn't 'ave cared if you showed the 'ole school me cricket set, neither. No, what bothers me is you lot make me look like a real naff punter, an I got a job to do in this school. One that requires respect. So I'm 'ere to ask you lot to gi'me that respect, or I'll 'ave to take it out of you the ;ard way." Snape threatened.

"Okay, fine, we respect you. It was just a joke, Snape." James offered.

He looked worried.

"You should be worried! You should all be worried! Snape's going to do massive amounts of GBH on the lot of you!" Harry yelled.

He knew no one could hear him, but he couldn't help himself.

Sort of like when you watch telly, but worse.

"If I were you, Sirius, I'd agree with James. I've seen Snape in action; he's not little Snivellus anymore." Remus quietly warned Sirius.

"Fuck that!" Sirius hissed

"I didn't find it funny, Potter. You caught me off guard, but you won't do it again. You can do what you like with me, you can make be do fucking cartwheels in the air all the way to the moon, and it'll never make Lily choose you over me. We're in this together, mate; you'd better start being nice to me so I don't poison her mind against you. I could do it, you know. As for the rest of you, I don't give a fuck for your war, and your cause any more than I give a fuck for Tom Riddle's. I'm in this for money, for power, for vengeance, and for me. Fuck you, and all your friends, and everyone you know. I want you to leave me alone. No more Snivellus. No more making fun of me. Just leave me alone. As for you, Black, I'm done fucking with you. I will kill you. And I don't need magic to do it. I'll beat you to the ground and kick you death while you beg me to spare your miserable life. Then I'll go fuck your girlfriend, Sibyl. Yunno, just like I always do." Snape sneered.

James Potter had a look of shock on his face.

Remus Lupin looked rueful.

Peter Pettigrew was clearly terrified.

Sirius was furious.

"Oh yes sir! Oh we won't bother you anymore! Fuck you, you black-hearted Death Eater bastard! I'll call you whatever the fuck I want to!" he shot back.

"I thought you'd say that, Black. So let's settle this like the men we are. If you win, you can continue to berate and humiliate me for the next two years. If I win, then you leave me the fuck alone. Agreed?" Snape proposed.

"Sirius, let's just leave Snape alone. He's got enough problems." Lupin suggested.

"It's not important. We're not kids anymore. Leave the man be." James Potter agreed.

"No! Fuck that shit! Fuck this cunt, I'm not listening to this fucking junkie bastard what takes it up the arse from his fucking master, Lord Voldemort! Fuck him!" Sirius shouted.

"Keep your sexual fantasies to yourself, Black." Snape commented.

"Fuck you! Alright, I'll fight you! I'd love to!"

Sirius took out his wand, but Snape took off his vest and his shirt.

The winding scar on his chest and collarbone wasn't there yet, but the scar on his belly looked fresh, like a just healed wound.

He looked painfully thin, and you could see his ribs, but you could see all of the tendons stretched across his flat and wiry muscles.

He had the body of a half-starved lightweight boxer and the bluish-tinged knuckles to boot.

"Like I said, I don't need magic to deal with a cunt like you. And I don't want me clothes soiled with your blue blood." Snape spat.

Sirius took off his robe, too.

He had the honed physique of an athlete. He was physically bigger than Snape, and in a lot better health; he practically glowed with same.

"Fine with me!" Sirius agreed.

He rushed Snape, and threw a sucker punch to the jaw.

The crack of shattering bone was audible.

Everyone winced, even Remus and James started yelling for Sirius to leave Snape alone, that was enough.

But Snape didn't fall.

He didn't fall, didn't budge, didn't even blink.

"Oh shit." Harry said.

He knew what the Old Man was doing. He'd pulled the same play on inexperienced fighters before. Harry knew how to fight; he could take a punch and he could take the pain. You let them have the first crack, they get off their guard and then you hand them their balls.

Sirius was in a lot of fucking trouble.

"Run away, Sirius! Run away!" Harry yelled.

As if he could hear Harry, Peter was already running away, but James stopped him.

Snape spit out a few teeth, with bits of gum attached, and with blood dribbling from his lips, smiled ironically at Sirius.

"Amateur." He said.

He grabbed Sirius by the shoulders with his long arms, and smashed his forehead into Sirius's forehead and tossed him away.

Sirius staggered back, dazed.

Then, Snape sprang like a snake, raining heavy blows on his opponent. Boxed his ears, broke his nose, a right to the solar plexus, two lefts to the kidneys. Almost casually, and with practised precision he landed blow after blow after blow to the soft parts of his enemy's body, connecting painfully with bundles of nerve endings and bruising delicate organs just beneath the well-cared for skin.

Sirius threw another punch, to Snape's stomach, tearing at the half-healed wound with his fingernails.

It made a sickening, wet, squelching sound as it opened and began to bleed.

Harry screamed "Oh fuck!" at the same time James Potter did.

"Go get Mom! Go get Mom! She'll stop them!" Harry yelled at his father, although he couldn't hear.

Remus Lupin broke into a run.

Presumably he was thinking something like what Harry had.

Snape cursed, feeling anxiously to make sure his guts had not burst through the fissure.

Sirius tried to throw another punch, aiming, it seemed to pull his opponent's guts right out of his belly.

Snape caught Sirius' hand in his fist, and wrenched his arm, snapping it.

Harry could see the bone poking through the skin.

James looked horrified. So did Peter Pettigrew. Compared to them, Harry was relatively nonplussed. He had beaten people as badly as his father had beaten his godfather, and had certainly been beaten as badly as both of them.

The realisation that such was normal to him was what made Harry feel a bit queasy.

"Stop! Fucking stop, you'll murder each other!" James cried.

He tried to wade into the fight, but Peter stopped him.

"Stay out of it, James! They're mad, they'll break you into bits, too!"

Sirius screamed in pain and fell to his knees.

Snape spit a mouthful of his blood into Sirius' upturned face, and kicked him in the stomach.

Sirius fell on all fours, gasping, choking on puke and his own blood.

Snape struggled to keep his footing, clutching his hands over his belly.

"I win. You lose. Leave me alone."

Snape's voice sounded odd and his face was terribly swollen, blood was pouring out of his mouth. His jaw was probably broken, and the deep gash on his stomach was open, again, a flap of skin like a huge lip stuck out over his blood-soaked hand and arm.

Somehow still on his feet, Snape pushed past three shocked Marauders.

Harry's point of view went with Snape's, staggering away, unsure of where to go.

Remus and Lily caught up to him.

"Oh Christ! Good God in Heaven, Sev, you fucking idiot, look at you! We can't take him to the infirmary. I'll have to take him home." Lily said

"Can I help, Snape?" Remus asked.

"No. You go look after your friend Black. I'm used to all this. He's not." Snape said.

"You and Prongs take Padfoot to the goddam infirmary. Make something up, Moony! They'll both get expelled!" Lily told Remus.

"Don't worry. We're good liars. You look after Snape."

Harry saw Remus run away, and then he saw his mother's worried face, and then he saw nothing.

The next thing he knew, Harry was back at the hovel in Spinner's End.

Eileen and Tobias were drowsing in front of the telly in the wake of a few Newcastle Browns and a big take-away Chinese meal when the hearth turned green and Lily and Snape tumbled in.

He clutched at his wounded belly, and the whole left side of his face was swollen up and black and blue such that he could only grunt and mumble and dribble blood from the corner of his ruined mouth.

Lily was barely holding him up.

"Wake up!" she yelled.

Eileen and Tobias woke slowly.

Then, they saw their son.

"Balor's eye! My baby!" Eileen screamed.

Tobias leaped out of his chair, and scooped his son up like he was made of feathers.

"I'll take him into the kitchen; we'll put him on the table. Lily, help Eileen get her potions. Dinna worry, Sev. Mum an' Da are here. We'll put yer back together!"

"Treacher! Master Severus is hurt!" Eileen called, as she and Lily scurried off to her lab.

The scene was chaotic and since Harry was seeing it from his father's perspective, it faded in and out in a red haze. Everyone and everything was spattered with Snape's blood. He Harry saw a phantasmagoria of bloody towels and odd-smelling potions and salves. Chaos with towels and bandages and potions and salves, and flustered arrivals as Eileen and her parents and Treacher as they put Snape back together again while Tobias and Lily assisted.

"Severus, what did you do?" Eileen finally asked.

He was reaching for a bottle of Horntail on the table with a bandaged and trembling hand.

Eileen picked it up and put the bottle to his lips so he could drink, like he was a baby.

"My poor baby. That's enough, now."

"I won." Snape managed to say.

"That was a rhetorical question. Don't talk, Sev. Toby, take him up to his room. Gently. If that rip in his belly opens again, his guts will burst out. I'll ward the doors. If anybody comes asking, he's been here all week-end, and he'd in bed with flu. "

"Sounds good. Ye're nae walkin', Sev. I got yer. "

Snape passed out as his father carried him up the stairs, so that was all Harry saw.

***

The next thing Harry saw was the inside of a room, and Lily pacing the floor.

"You crazy motherfucker! Don't you know Sirius almost died! You broke his arm, and four of his ribs, and his cheekbone! You ruptured his, I can't remember which, and Jim says he was pissing blood for a week from that hit to the kidneys. He was in St. Mungo's for almost a week! What the fuck were you thinking?" she demanded.

"I was thinking I wanted him and your darling boyfriend Potter to leave me the fuck alone! And your precious Black sucker-punched me and shattered me jaw in three places before I even had me fists up! Then he ripped the stitches on me stomach open and tried to pull me insides out so I was almost standing there in me own guts! I was laid up 'ere for some time, meself! I most likely should have been in St. Mungo's! So excuse me if I don't feel sorry for him." Snape replied.

"You are really out of fucking control, you do know that, right? You're a mess, Sev. You've become a drunk and a gutter junkie and a thug. All this Death Eater bullshit has ruined you. If you've seen the error of your ways, why don't you come clean to Dumbledore and join our side? You'd make a great spy, and he'll help you get clean and get your shit together."

Snape waved his hand, dismissively.

"Fucking Tom Riddle. You don't understand, Lily. What he's done to me, to me friends, to me 'ole family, this is fucking personal. The old fool. He wants money and power and sex like anybody else. The rest is bullshit. The purebloods are rich and stupid and narcissistic. He takes advantage of them. In more ways than one. Some of them deserve it. Most of them don't. But he likes me. He trusts me. He loves me. I'm the son he never had, me Mum barely escaped him. He thinks I'm as evil and rotten as he is. He's grooming me to be his left-hand man. And I'm gonna cosy up to the perverted old bastard. Them I'll kill him. Then I'll have me vengeance, but, mind, I'll have his money. And his power. And his estate. I'm his heir. On the old fool's oath, his Unbreakable vow, when he dies, it all belongs to me. I'll run the whole show the way your Dad ran his business. Believe me, Lily, I'll curse meself till the day I die that I let Riddle fool me. But me eyes are open now. Wide open. And I won't rest until I'm avenged. And rich."

"Sev, my father's going to be in jail for the next 20 years, maybe the rest of his life, for running his business. And you think you're going to kill Voldemort. All by yourself. Are you fucking loony? I always wanted you to turn on Voldemort, but not like this! Just turn your back on it. Leave. Get away from him. Start going to WAND."

"I don't need WAND! I can quite this shit anytime I want. And I can't just walk away! I've got nothing, Lily. Not a pot to piss in, not a fucking window to throw it out. I'm one old fool away from being Lord Snape. Money. Power. And loads of it. I can get help for me Mum and Dad, they can have a nice place to live. I'll buy them a house in Hoylake. Your parents, too. Shit, I'll buy the fucking parole board and spring Artie from jail. When you

We can have a nice place to live. A castle bigger than Hogwarts, just for us. You and me and your fucking precious Jimmy Potter. What do I care? We'll be one big, happy, filthy-rich family. With that kind of fucking bread, I can afford to be fucking gracious."

Lily sighed.

"You're so full of that fucking Dragon's Fire, you really don't know what's real and what isn't, anymore, do you? You're a pathetic fucking junkie. You can't hardly keep yourself together and you want to overthrow Lord Voldemort and buy a fuckin' castle."

"I want to give you a good life, Lily. I want us to be somebody. I want you to be Lady Snape. Show those pureblood bastards they're not the only ones with class." Snape snarled.

"Do you think I give a shit? I just want you, Sev. I love you."

"Sure you do. I'll bet you say the same thing to that poor bastard Potter. And he probably believes you." Snape snapped.

"Fuck you! You know what I should do? I should get up and walk away, and tell you to fuck off for all the times you called me a filthy mudblood! I have a nice boyfriend, now. One who isn't a fucking wreck of drunk and a junkie." Lily snapped back.

"Nice? Potter's never been nice to me."

"He's going to have to start."

Snape smiled.

"Why?" he asked.

"You know why, you snarky piece of shit! I'm not about to get down on my knees and beg you for it!"

"Then I'll get down on my knees. I don't mind."

Snape got on his knees, shuffled across the room, and embraced her.

"Please, please, please! I'll even apologise to that rat bastard Black. Just don't cut me off!" Snape begged, in a joky voice

Lily started to laugh.

"Why can't I say no to you, why can't I forget about you, no matter how low and filthy you get?" she asked.

"Maybe low and filthy turns you on." Snape suggested.

"I shouldn't doubt it. You're a nasty, evil, mean-spirited, big ugly bastard of a thug and a villain, Sev. And those are your good points. But I do love you, don't I? Shuffle over to the bed, you crazy bastard!" Lily replied.

Hermione, Harry thought, offered similar opinions of Snape.

For his part, Harry was hoping he wasn't going to see them rehearsing for the occasion of his conception, but then the atmosphere changed again and he was in his father's laboratory, where a much older Snape was hard at work.

His mother walked in, right past him.

She slammed the door.

"Sev, you had better not be making another batch of Purple Doom for that son of a bitch Tom Riddle!" she said.

Snape, who looked considerably more sober, had an amused look on his face when he turned around.

He looked pretty much the way he usually did, except a little younger, and his hair was a little longer.

There was something about him, though, that stirred something in Harry's memory.

For the time being, he ignored it.

"I've risen up in the ranks. No more drugs business for me. The old bastard's proud that I've gotten sober. He couldn't be happier. He wouldn't want me to backslide, now, would he? Not his Left-Hand Wizard, the Heir Apparent. Fucking bollocks. Actually, I'm making a sample of the Potion my first year students are supposed to have done for their homework tomorrow." Snape was saying.

"You're teaching the first years this year? That's gear!"

"Supposedly I'm the most talented apprentice in a hundred years. And that Master's from the Seven Guitar Wizards hasn't hurt. And with grisly old Horace finally giving up the ghost an' retiring after this year, it's a cinch Albus will hire me. You are looking at Hogwarts next Potions Master."

"How can you teach your classes, study, go to WAND, feign loyalty to Lord Voldemort, and spy for us, all at the same time?" Lily asked.

"What can I say? I'm a low-down, dirty, self-serving Snape. I mean, snake."

Harry had another heart attack moment when his mother laughed, put her arms around Snape and they kissed each other, in a familiar and relaxed fashion.

"So, is teaching as bad as you always thought it would be?" Lily teased.

"No. It's fucking worse. Mind, don't laugh at me, Lily, I'm not taking the piss! Nimrods. Fools. Yobboes. Genetic defectives. Fucking morons. Parents don't tell them shit about the world. Or anything else. So it's up to me to make witches and wizards out of 'em. And I'll do it, too." Snape replied.

A silence passed between them.

"Well? Fucking say something! Have you made up your mind?" Lily demanded.

"So, I'm going to be James Potter's brother, by law and magical bond. You're not going to want us to double up on you, are you Lily? I don't think Potter or I could be that liberal."

"Oh, shut up, Snape! You're so foul! Where should we go for our honeymoon?"

"My grandfather has a nice cottage in the Carpathians. It's very…private." Snape suggested, suggestively.

So, I was a honeymoon baby, Harry thought, turning red to the roots of his hair.

***

Harry found himself next in Snape's lab, witnessing both of his dads looking none too happy with each other.

It seemed that James' patience was exhausted at long last.

He was furious.

"Some kind of fucking brother you are! Do you know she's pregnant? We've been married a whole year, and Lily didn't get pregnant, and it's not as if I've been lying down on the job! Not me! I mean, just because I'm not some freak of fucking nature what's hung like a goddamn farm animal doesn't mean there's any flies on me! But still, she marries you, _Snivellus_, you Slytherin son-of-a-bitch Snivellus Snape and goes off with you for one fucking month, one fucking measly month and she's pregnant! Pregnant! Fucking pregnant already! What the fuck? How many times a day did you screw? Six?" he demanded, angrily.

"Don't be such a childish fuck, Potter! It's your kid, anyway, as much as mine. You're the father by law and magical bond, and I'm the father by blood. In the eyes of the law, both of us are Daddy. You're going to be raising him, anyway, so why don't you just fuck off out of me lab? Don't look at me to solve your problems. Go to a doctor, have your sperm count tested. Take some vitamins. Invest in one of those pumps to make your little cock long enough so your soldiers don't die from exhaustion on the way to the mission." Snape sneered in return.

"Fuck you, you snarky motherfucker!"

James hit him.

Hard.

Snape fell right on his arse.

"So that's how you want it, is it, Potter? You want me to kick your arse all over this fucking dungeon?"

"You bet your arse, Snape! I'd like to see you fuckin' try it! Come on, let's have yer! I'm gonna push yer ugly boatrace in!"

Snape hit James back, shattering his glasses and his cheekbone.

James stumbled back, closed his hands around an ashtray and, swearing horribly, he smacked Snape upside the head with it, opening up a fairly large gash.

Then, he brought his other fist around and broke Snape's nose.

They beat each other up something awful, hitting and kicking and whacking at one another with their fists and their feet and whatever came to hand.

They fought to a bloody drew that ended in a smashed lab, and both men, breathless, battered, and bruised somehow crawled to a sitting position.

"Fuck me, Snape, you are one tough son of a bitch!"

"You're a real two-tone motherfucker, yourself, Potter. Most blokes wouldn't be conscious after the beating you took. Are we square, now?" Snape asked.

"Yeah. I feel loads better. Funny, that."

"You wouldn't happen to be an Irishman, would you, Potter?"

"Half. Why?"

"I knew it. Nobody can take a beating like an Irishman. You lot never quit."

Snape picked up the remains of his glasses, and Snape touched his finger to them.

"_Occulus_ _Reparo_! Well, if we're gonna be family, at least you're half an Irishman, not just a fucking Southerner. Still, I mean, you ain't family with a man until you've had a good fight. That's wot me old Da said right after me and him had it out. You want some smoke?" Snape replied.

"Sure, bro by law. But I thought you were sober."

"I am sober. It's only weed."

They both started to laugh.

"So, what are you naming him? Our kid."

"Harry."

"How about Harry James?"

"Cool." Snape agreed.

He picked through some debris, and came up with some sad bits of shattered glass.

"Fuck, Jimmy, you broke me hookah. There's no fixing this."

"Sorry. I'll buy you another. Yunno, I think we might need to go to the Infirmary. Your nose is smeared all over your face, and my cheek is swelling me eye shut. Episkey and some pain-relieving potions aren't going to cover it."

"Naw. We'll go see me Mum. She'll fix us up and if we let me Da in on it, he'll let us use his hookah."

"Shit, I think I'm really going to get on well with me in-laws. Give us a hand, will you, bro by law?"

The two men struggled to their feet and over to the fireplace, to floo themselves to Spinner's End.

***

The next thing Harry saw was something not many people get to see.

Themselves as a one-year old, toddling around.

Of course, the fact that Lily Potter was really Lily Potter-Snape and that James Potter was the father by law and magical bond but not by blood of Harry Potter, who was really Harry Potter-Snape was a well-guarded secret.

One that Dumbledore, who had officiated at Lily and Severus' secret marriage, knew.

The scene was Snape's parlour.

It looked much the way it did in the present, except cleaner and not so gloomy.

Harry imagined that must have to do with his mother coming around.

Here things were scattered here and there, amid the Old Man' was, after all, as much her home as the house in Godric's Hollow.

Dumbledore and James Potter and Severus Snape were sitting around on the couch, keeping an eye on baby Harry as he sucked noisily on a lemon drop and attempted to gnaw on the arm of the couch.

Harry was at Hogwarts for his weekly visit with his secret father by blood.

"Tastes good, doesn't it, Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

Baby Harry regarded him happily, smiling with his bright green eyes.

James scooped the baby up into his lap, and Snape scrutinised him, carefully.

"Jimmy, do you think Harry looks like me? I think he looks like you. Which is odd." Snape said.

"Really? I think he looks like you, bro by law. Especially when he's thinking; he gets the same look on his face. Actually, he looks more like Lily than either of us. I mean, we've both got black hair. But he's got her nose, and her smile. Maybe his face is the same shape as yours. But I think we look enough alike as far as build and hair color that he'll pass as my son by blood for a few years."

"It's a good thing he doesn't have my nose. Albus, do you think he looks like me?"

"Yes, Severus, I do. But he does look more like Lily. Don't worry so much." Dumbledore reassured him

Harry started to cry.

"Somebody wants to see his Da." Dumbledore commented.

"Somebody needs to have his diaper changed. Daddy by law needs a diaper break. He's all yours, Sev."

James handed Harry to Severus.

Harry stopped crying.

"He always does that. I think he misses you." James said

Snape did diaper duty by magical means, and sat on the couch, in the same place he usually sat when they watched telly together, holding Harry in his lap.

"He just likes to play with me hair. He doesn't know who I am. He knows you and Lily." Snape protested.

"Sure he does, Sev. You're his father." James disagreed.

"Do you really know who I am, Harry?" Snape asked his son.

Harry watched his baby self giggle, and pull on his father's hair, then begin chewing on the end of it.

"He's smiling at you." Dumbledore told him.

"That's just gas." Snape replied.

James just laughed.

"Come on, Albus. Let's leave these two alone. I think Sev needs some cheering up."

Then, Harry was alone in the room with his father.

Snape sat him down on the couch.

In the same spot where Harry usually sat to this day, to watch telly with the Old Man.

***

And suddenly Harry was back in the Old Man's office, in the present day, alone, in the dark, in the dead of an evilly cold and snowy winter night, feeling as though he had just been smacked upside the head by Snape's ashtray.

He somehow wandered out into the parlour, and lit up the lanterns and candles and sat heavily on the couch.

There was the ashtray, the green marble ashtray with the chip in it, and Harry had just seen how the chip got there.

He put the ashtray down and looked around the room, remembering how his mother's sweater had been hanging over the chair opposite him.

He was sitting in his usual spot, the spot his father used to sit him in when he was just a baby.

Harry had some vague memories of his parents, his mother and his father, but as he looked around the parlour and recalled what it had looked like in the pensieve, he realised that some of them had taken place right here.

Some of those fuzzy and fond hazy memories of a black-haired father were not of James, but of Snape.

Harry furrowed his brow in concentration, staring at the now broken-down old couch, the coffee table littered with parchment and butts from the overflowing ashtray and candy wrappers.

M& M's, Chocolate Frogs, Bertie Botts Beans, Twix…

Twix?

Harry picked up a Twix wrapper.

He had a memory of a room, with a telly in it, and his black-haired father, giving him Twix bars to eat. He'd always had the memory and had always assumed the black-haired man was James Potter, but now he realised he'd been wrong.

The memory was of this room.

This room where he once sat with his parents, or sometimes just with his father and watched telly and ate Twix bars.

As he concentrated, the memory came into sharper focus, of a man with black eyes and a long face with a long hawk nose and very long black hair that he liked to pull and chew on, tearing off little pieces of Twix bar and putting them in his hand.

Snape's face came into focus.

Da.

That's what he used to call himself, that's how Harry remembered him.

Da, and Snape, the Old Man, they were the same person.

Harry got a strange feeling that was horrible and unsettling and made him feel like he wanted to puke and cry and at the same time he felt warm and secure and safe, like he'd never felt at all, ever, not for as long as he could remember.

Harry Potter, ex-junkie, dragon-fighter, basilisk-killer, dementor-defeater, Boy Who Lived and general Bad-Ass Motherfucker started to cry like a little baby.

He had, of course, known that Snape was his father, and they were beginning to get along, and he was starting to like the old man, but loving him as a father?

Not half.

Of course, Harry loved James Potter, the man who raised him; the man he'd bonded to as a baby, who fed him and loved him and changed him and cared for him. But he was really remembering two men, Dad, and Da, both of whom fed him and loved him and changed him and played with him and cared for him.

Harry suddenly began to see every thing Snape ever said to him, every thing he had ever done, every second he'd ever spent in Snape's company in a completely different light.

In the bright and shiny Twix-bar tasting light of the new Da.

***

What Harry didn't know and really wasn't thinking about was that his father had a fail-safe set up in just the case of unauthorised access to his office with a Skeleton Key spell.

His familiar, Zeppelin the Iguana, was to notify him of any break-ins.

Zeppelin was on the case, immediately, while Harry was still embroiled in the pensieve.

He searched the school for his wizard, and when he was unable to find him, contacted him through their bond.

It takes, however, quite some time for a very old iguana to search an entire castle, so Zeppelin was just getting around to contacting his wizard as a rather dazed Harry made his way up to Gryffindor tower, to have a lie down.

Ron snored away as Harry lay down, and noticed there was a bag of Chocolate Frogs on his pillow.

There was a tag attached to it saying "From Your Secret Admirer."

Harry chuckled, in spite of himself.

"I got about a million of those." He said.

He tried to wake Ron up to offer him a Chocolate Frog, but Ron was unconscious.

That was most likely Myrtle's doing.

So, Harry unwrapped two frogs and popped them into his mouth.

They had kind of a funny aftertaste to them, so Harry didn't eat a third.

He couldn't place what it was. But it was unpleasant, and accompanied by an unpleasant smell.

Then, his ears began to ring a little and he started to feel kind of dizzy.

Harry thought it must be the cold, so he pulled up his extra blanket.

The ringing became a roaring and he had vertigo.

Harry jumped out of bed, his head reeling. The room was going around and around. Though it was very cold, he was sweating bullets.

Then he recognised the strange taste, the awful smell.

Wormwood. It was wormwood. One of the main ingredients in Purple Doom.

He suddenly recalled the 5th year potions class when Snape had explained to them that taken in large quantities Purple Doom could be a deadly poison that brought on a slow and agonising death.

Panic gripped his heart.

He'd been poisoned.

Then he remembered something about an antidote that Da and Hermione had been working on. But he never recalled if it had been perfected.

Harry fell to the ground, on his face.

He may have just laid there, helpless, but all the commotion he made woke Ron up, and he rolled Harry over on his back.

"Harry, what's wrong?"

"Poisoned. Wormwood. Frogs. Get Sirius. Astronomy Tower. Antidote." Harry said.

"Poisoned! Oh fuck! I can't just leave you, Harry? Harry!"

Harry was no longer responding.

Ron tried to pick Harry up, and couldn't.

He immediately took off for the Astronomy Tower.

***

Sirius couldn't make out a word that Ron was saying, because he was hysterical, but Professor Trelawney seemed to understand better.

"By the Mother! Harry's been poisoned with a dose of Purple Doom in a bag of Chocolate Frogs!" she exclaimed.

"He needs the antidote! Sibyl, give me my briefcase. Take me to Harry, Ron. Now!"

***

Of course, by this time Snape had got the message that Harry broke into his office and he had apparated to Hogsmeade.

He walked to Hogwarts in the thin rays of the winter dawn, pissed at Malfoy that he hadn't waited another week until Snape had the correct pensieve in place.

Now Harry knew everything. Not that it was up to Lucius to disclose it, but maybe Luke had a point.

If either one of them were to die, at least they would be father and son in spirit as well as in fact.

Snape expected so see Harry crying on the couch with Twix wrappers in his fist.

He did not expect to see Ronald Weasley holding Harry's jerking body down as Sirius Black, who was kneeling on Harry's legs, removed a titanic syringe from Harry's chest with an evil sucking sound.

"What the fuck is going on?" Snape demanded.

For a moment he and Sirius and Ron all watched Harry's body continue its violent jerks, and then, he became very, very, very still.

Much to Snape's and Sirus' surprise, an elaborate goblin tattoo which covered much of Harry's chest began to appear.

"The glamour's wearing off! By the Mother and the King, is he dead?" Ron wailed.

"Put your head to his chest, Weasley, you fucking idiot!" Snape snapped.

"I can hear his heart beating. He's not dead!" Ron announced.

"Did he go on some kind of binge?" Snape asked.

He expected Harry to regain consciousness any moment now.

"It's much worse than that, I'm afraid." Sirius replied.

He produced a sack of Chocolate Frogs protected by an Auror's Evidentiary Forcefield from his briefcase.

"These have each been filled with enough Purple Doom to get the whole seventh year class high, I'd wager, just from the smell of the packets on the two Harry opened. He did eat both of them. I've given him the largest dose of antidote that you and Granger proved to be safe, and he's showing no signs of coming around."

Even through the forcefield, they could smell the bitter scent of wormwood in the air.

"Jesus Christ! Mother, help us! We have to get him to the infirmary! Weasley, get Granger! Get everybody in the whole fucking house! Tell the fireplace Snape-Prince house. Then all of you, quickly, come to the infirmary! Tell Granger to get your sister! And fetch the Headmaster! Well? Fucking go, you manky little git, don't stand there gawping at me!"

Sirius and Snape took Harry away, as Ron practically dove for the fireplace and the Floo Powder in the jar on top of it.

***

As he blacked out to the sight of Ron's worried face, Harry began to relax. He felt like he was in a rush, but what a rush! Like he had just done the purest most pristine high grade smack in the universe.

It was wonderful.

Splendid.

Magnificent.

In heaven, the angels were joyously ringing the bells for Harry Potter, he was home, home at last.

Harry revelled in the beautiful feeling of being back in the embrace of his great and forbidden love as the long denied warmth and peace and bliss spread through his body. He felt high and dry like a cloud in the sky…

…a cloud that looked just like a broomstick.

"Sev, come here. This cloud looks like a broomstick."

Harry lifted his little brother up to see the broomstick-shaped cloud.

"It does, Harry!"

"I don't think it does. I hate to tell you this, but Little Jim just turned Ellie into a mouse." Ginny observed.

Harry straightened everything out, as the front door opened and two of his parents came in.

"Were they all good while we were gone?" James asked.

"Oh yeah, Dad, they were great."

"Are you sure, Harry?" Lily asked

"Good as gold."

"He's lying, I can tell."

His third parent had just arrived.

"I am not, Da!"

"Yes you are, Harry. I'm your father, I know."

"Well, I'm his father too, Sev, and I think...I think you're right." James Potter said.

Harry put his arm around Ginny and he laughed.

"Let's go upstairs." she whispered in his ear.

They knew that Harry's parents would be so busy with the younger kids, they'd never notice Harry and Ginny had snuck away.

Harry sealed the door to his bedroom, and giggling all the while, he and Ginny got undressed.

"I can't believe we're doing this right under their noses." Ginny said.

"Da will catch on before Mum and Dad do. We'd better make this quick."

"Not too quick, Harry."

After he made love to Ginny, Harry fell asleep.

But his dreams weren't pleasant…

…his whole body was seized with a feeling of pain. But worst was the intense agony that it wasn't true, and it wasn't real, the reality was the nightmare and his beautiful vision was just a cruel and fleeting dream…

He was coming down, coming down fast.

Plunged into the fires of Hell, where demons capered and chuckled far from where the joyous bells had pealed.

Every muscle in his body ached. It was like withdrawal, it felt like the worst moments of withdrawal he ever had; but they were unending moments, unending and unyielding to the passing of time.

Harry tried to move, tried to scream, but he couldn't.

It was just like Snape had said in that long ago Potions class.

Like being eternally trapped in a nightmare from which he could not awaken, unable to move, or even scream.

***

In the Hogwarts infirmary, Harry lay pale and close to death.

The Headmaster was at his bedside and so were Madame Pomfrey, Professor Snape, and Hermione Granger.

Ron and Ginny Weasley, Sirius Black, and Harry's grandparents and great-grandparents were also clustered around the bed.

The glamour had completely worn off of him, and you could see the elaborate tattoo on his chest quite clearly.

It was an elaborate tattoo of a phoenix in flight, specifically Fawkes. The tattoo was extremely detailed and lifelike, and the glowing trail of red, yellow and orange flames that Fawkes rose out of and was enveloped in began on Harry's thigh and wrapped all the way around his body.

Above Fawkes' head was a perfect representation of the sword of Godric Gryffindor, and in his claws he held a scroll emblazoned with and Elvish verse in Elvish script that glowed a with the same silvery-blue fire as the sword.

Cryptically, the scroll read "Live in Pain, Die in Flame, Rise Again."

As he lay, motionless, the wings of the phoenix beat slowly and steadily, fanning the flames to leap higher, and the blue light to glow brighter.

"How could he stand the pain?" Sirius marvelled.

"Those are the tattoos of a Master in the Third Degree in Magick of the Earth. Apparantly, he's been trained to. It's a good job he did. If it wasn't for the network of protections that tattoo gives him, Potter would be dead. Is the needle ready, Granger?"

"Yes."

Madame Pomfrey sterilised it, and handed the needle to Snape.

No one dared breathe as Harry became the first human being to test a double portion of the Purple Doom antidote that Severus Snape and Hermione Granger had been working on for early two years.

The extra-strength potion, which was designed to save someone from wormwood poisoning, or break a Doom Trance rather than wean addicts off worked on frogs, nifflers, and cats, but this was the first human test.

Considering the amount of Purple Doom that remained on the chocolate frog packets alone, it was also Harry's only chance for survival.

Snape straddled Harry's legs, and raised the needle above his head like a knife.

With all his might, he plunged the needle into Harry's chest, in tiny area of untouched skin behind Fawkes' head, injecting the antidote into his slowly dying heart.

Harry sat up, and his sightless eyes flew open.

Snape pushed him back down.

"He's having a fit, Sirius. Hold him down. I'll make sure he doesn't swallow his tongue!"

"Severus, I can see his heart beating!" Madame Pomfrey exclaimed.

"Well, what do you want me to do about it, Poppy?"

"Open his mouth wider!"

The medi-witch poured a potion down Harry's throat and his convulsions ceased.

She listened to his heartbeat.

"It's normal, now. It worked." She marvelled.

"Thank you, Poppy. Now we have to call him back, like you would to break someone from an ordinary Doom Trance. Alright, everyone. This is why I had you all come here. Harry needs you. We need to wake him from this trance the way you wake a child having a nightmare." Snape told them.

"What if it doesn't work?" Ron asked.

Snape was about to scream at Ron again, but his mother gave him a dirty look.

Eileen put her arm around Ron.

"If it doesn't work, Harry will stay like that for another hundred and twenty years, until the end of his natural life. But we won't let that happen will we. We're just going to try to get him to wake up." Eileen explained.

Ron had a million questions he wanted to ask, but he decided to keep schtum, for now.

"Okay." He said

***

Voices called to Harry, distant voices penetrating his envelope of paralysed agony.

"…Harry! Harry it's Albus Dumbledore. Move in the direction of my voice…"

"…Sirius…please, Harry…all the way back from the mirror world…"

"…is Hermione? Can you hear me Harry! It's Purple Doom. It'll take you away forever. You'll feel like this forever! Come back, Harry."

"Harry, this is Ginny. Fight, damnit! Fight like I would! Come back to me, Harry…"

"Harry! It's Ron! You can't let it end like this! Please, Harry!"

"…it didn't kill your Dad, Harry, or your Grandma! Don't let it get you."

"…you won't let it get you, will you, Harry? Not my grandson. Fight, Harry!"

"…use your hooves, lad! Your soul's got em, even if your body hasn't! Kick!"

"…use your charm, Harry. A veela can convince anyone of anything. Even themselves."

Then another voice, louder than the others, booming, intent, cutting through the haze of pain like a razor.

"Harry, listen to Da. Follow my voice. Like a path you would walk I want you to follow my every word with your mind. I am leading you out of the darkness. With every word I say you come closer and closer to waking. When I am finished with this next sentence you will be fully and complete awake. Come with Da. Trust me. I have you, and I will not let you go."

Harry let out a loud and terrible scream and reached out blindly. He could move and he could see and hear.

Most importantly he could scream.

Harry screamed and screamed and screamed as terrible spasms of intense pain wracked his body. Then, the pain faded into a dull ache and subsided and Harry crumpled against somebody, somebody who had been holding him fast against the throes of his agony, keeping him from flinging himself out of bed and convulsing on the floor.

No, not just somebody.

His father.

Harry started to cry again.

"Don't cry, Harry. Da's here. You're going to be awright." Snape soothed him

***

More gently than they would have thought possible, Snape laid Harry back down on the infirmary bed after his screaming and convulsions subsided.

"Why am I so cold? Where is everybody?" Harry muttered.

"Everyone come closer. Put your hands on him, hug him, ruffle his hair, let him know you're here. It doesn't matter what you say. Don't worry, he'll come out of it and speak to us soon. Let him hold onto you." Snape instructed.

"You're Harry's father?" Ron squawked.

"Oh, fuck!" Snape exclaimed.

"I'll take care of it, Professor." Hermione announced.

She took out her wand, and obliviated that part of Ron's memory.

"What was I saying?" Ron asked.

"Just do what I told you, Weasley." Snape instructed.

A few tense moments went by and Harry finally sat up.

He felt sick and exhausted, but he was in control of his senses once more.

"Shouldn't I be dead?'' he asked, looking at Hermione.

"Technically, yes. But Snape tried our antidote potion out on you, and it worked!"

Harry looked at his father.

"Saved my life again." He said.

"No, Sirius and I saved your life. And your friend Mr. Weasley, as well. That was enough Purple Doom to kill a giant. Someone tried to kill you and make it look like you fell off the wagon and overdosed." Snape told him.

"Do you think it was Riddle?" Harry asked.

"Not his style. Too clumsy and poorly thought out." Sirius replied.

"I agree. Tom wants to make a big public show of killing Harry and having his victory over all of us. And even if he did want to make Harry look like a junkie and bump him off on the sly, and discredit him that way, this hit was a sloppy mess. Riddle's a fucking professional, for fuck's sake. If he wants to kill some junkie, he sets them up with a hot shot. He wouldn't have somebody poison Chocolate fucking Frogs and hope people just sort of sussed it out that the dead bloke was a junkie." Snape added.

"Fuck me, you mean somebody else is trying to kill me?" Harry asked.

"Do you have any known enemies, Harry?" Sirius asked.

"Lots. I mean I've shagged half of the bints in the Wizarding World and never owled them back, and I've beat the fuck out of every third bloke in Britain." Harry replied.

"Chip off the old block!" Tobias proudly announced.

"Keep schtum, Toby." Eileen suggested.

"That doesn't narrow it down very much, Harry." Dumbledore added.

"Well it's like Mr. Snape said. Chip off the old block." Sirius agreed.

"What block? What chip? Blimey, Harry, is Snape your Dad?" Ron asked.

This time, Ginny obliviated him.

"Will you lot leave it out with the family shit!" she insisted.

"Move over, Harry. I've got a terrible headache. I think I'll have a lie down." Ron announced.

***

The evening, or rather the wee hours of the morning wound down with Harry going back to his new bedroom in the Snape-Prince home, with Ginny coming along with him to stay the night with him just in case he had any after-effects and the whole family of Potions Masters and Mistresses and Mages of the Third Degree watching him like a hawk.

Not to mention Tobias sitting in a chair by the door with his shotgun in his lap, just in case.

After Harry fell asleep, his grandparents and his great-grandparents assured his exhausted father that they would watch him and he should get some sleep.

Hermione decided to lie down with Snape for awhile, too, she was knackered.

Snape was just dozing off when he realised something, and it woke him up in a hurry.

"Granger, who the fuck told you that Harry and I were related?"

It occurred to him quite belatedly, and stupidly, he thought, considering the course of what had been a very, very, very long day.

"I figured it out for myself. And your family thinks that you just trusted me and told me the truth." Hermione replied.

"Recently?" Snape asked.

"If you call the summer after fifth year recently, then, sure. And I could tell that you've told Harry because of the way he changed towards you. He assumed you told me the truth, too."

"I didn't think it was necessary." Snape replied, waspishly.

"You're right. It wasn't." Hermione confirmed.

***

Early in the morning the day after the attempt on Harry's life, Professor Snape and his son had a long talk in the Snape-Prince kitchen, fuelled by many, many English Ovals.

Snape went first.

"Were you ever going to find it important to tell me or the Order for that matter that you are a Master in the Third Degree in Magick of the Earth, or were we going to have to guess?" he asked.

"It was the Headmaster's idea. He's been my sponsor. But it was my idea to keep in under wraps. I wanted everyone to think I was a shit wizard coasting on me reputation. I figured it would make Voldemort underestimate me." Harry confessed.

"A sound plan, except that when you cover a magical tattoo with a glamour, it doesn't work."

"I can take the glamour off when I need it."

"Don't count on that. I hope you were sober when you had it done."

"Stone cold sober. Just like you were, or so rumour has it, when you got the Sign of the Dragon."

Snape also had an elaborate goblin tattoo, the Sign of the Dragon. It covered part of his lower torso, lower back, and thigh, the tip of the tail ending just below his right knee.

"Of course I was." Snape answered.

An awkward bit of silence passed between them.

"Why didn't you want me to remember about when I was a baby, Da?" Harry wanted to know.

The idea of calling the Old Man by his surname to his face in private suddenly seemed grossly inappropriate.

"I thought that if I died it would be better that you didn't know." Snape confessed.

"So I could spend the rest of me life feeling ambivalent about me own father? Thanks for the lifetime of therapy." Harry retorted.

"Well, you'd best not peer into me pensieve, anymore! Sometimes I have fond memorise of your Mum I know you'd rather not see. Believe me. I actually saw your grandparents having it off when they thought it was asleep. I've tried to obliviate the memory scores of times and it just won't go." Snape warned his son.

"Yeah, me Mum. Your wife. Why couldn't you tell me that you and Mum were married and you and Dad learned to get along?" Harry asked

"Because the less you know the safer it is for you. Until Tom is dead. And you still have to be 100% James Potter's son and his son alone. Just like in the old days Both my name and Jimmy's are on your birth certificate, as we are both, legally and morally, your father. Now, after Voldemort killed your parents, that is, my wife and my brother by law, it would have been the end of you for me to suddenly pop out of the woodwork and claim you. Which leaves you thinking that you were a bastard and Lily and I were cuckolding Jimmy. I'm sorry about that, Harry." Snape explained.

The idea of calling his son by his surname to his face in private suddenly seemed like it would be grossly inappropriate.

"Where is my birth certificate?"

"Albus has it."

Harry fell silent. The truth made him feel better. He wasn't born out of some sleazy circumstance. Both his fathers were legally married to his mother, and in the eyes of the law, he was just as much the son of one as the other.

"Can I have it, after all this is over?"

"As long as you don't sell the exclusive rights to your story without letting your old Da in on it fifty-fifty." Snape replied.

Harry laughed a little.

"Da, after seeing how they were towards you, I don't know how you and Toby and Eileen ever survived, as a family." he said, suddenly serious.

"It was the only life I knew, since I was a baby, wasn't it? It was me life, I was used to it, and they were me parents. Albus and Minerva have been better parents to me than Mum and Dad ever were, but I couldn't live in the world they offered me. The world of clean shirts and regular mornings. I started sneaking back home from the public apparation point in Hogsmeade when I was 12. Mum and Dad didn't seem to care if I drank, or swore, or fought; and they were always glad to see me. And they were my parents, after all. I mean, I could trust them. After I became a Death Eater and a drug dealer and a junkie and all that was bad, they never gave me that look Albus did. They understood. Mind, they didn't approve, because your grandmother was clean by then, and they'd both sworn off hard drugs and hard liquor. But, they understood. When I'd really get hurt, you grandmother took care of me. If I was too beaten up to leave Hogwarts, she'd apparate to the school, illegally, to take care of me. She could have gone to jail. She didn't care what I was or who said what, I was still her son. And I didn't care what they were or who said what. They were still my parents."

Harry wasn't sure he really understood it, but he could accept it.

"One last question, then. Before Voldemort murdered Mum and Dad, why did our family need to be revenged on him? You told Mum that when you were both younger than I am now."

Snape lit another cigarette and put the pack on the table in such a way that told Harry it was going to be a long story.

"When your great-grandfather was still Potions Master at Hogwarts, it wasn't common knowledge how evil Tom Riddle had become, so when he came around wanting to be the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, Severus senior was all for it. He started inviting his old school chum Tom to his house, and Riddle was spending quite a bit of time at Hogwarts, and Tom Riddle met and fell in love with your grandmother, the sick bastard, and they had an affair. She was only 13 or 14 at the time, and Tom was as old as her father. But she was mad about him as well. Unlike you or I were at that age, your grandmother was very sheltered and innocent. She was everything he wanted in a bride. A dark witch, brilliant, beautiful, extremely powerful and possessed of great magical skill. To make a long story short, Riddle started grooming her to accept the Left-Hand path, and accept his diabolical view of the cosmos. He wanted her to be his protégé and his wife. Mum was never specific what it was that he told her about magic, or sex, or life, or love, or what he did to her or involved her in, but she became horrified, especially when she discovered that Tom had broken her contraceptive charm and she was pregnant. I do know what Tom tried to filter into me own head and I imagine being introduced to sex by him was twice as horrible. When your grandmother was fifteen, she dropped out of school, and got a back-alley abortion from a Muggle doctor.

She went underground in the Muggle world, and made her money working carnivals as a fortune teller and potion seller. That's how she met the Old Man; he was working as a roustabout after he was kicked out of the merchant marine for excessive violence and drunkenness. Which is really saying something. Things being what they are, the two of them hit it off, and Dad moved into Mum's caravan. It didn't seem to bother him that Mum was a drunk, and a junkie and that she was violent and half-crazy, because except for the junkie bit, so was he. He married her and I came along soon enough. I was born in their caravan, and they stayed with the carny until I was two or three, until it went belly up. Then they got the place on the Spinner's End estate. Not that the Old Man was the best of possible husbands, but if she hadn't met him and married him and had me, I don't think she would have lived long enough to spend half of her life in drunken junkie hell. I was five years old before she even let her parents know that she was alive and they had a grandchild and that was only because the word was that Tom Riddle had died in some far off and God-forsaken place, in the course of his pursuits of black magick. Riddle destroyed a good portion of your grandmother's life, and she will take whatever he did to her, whatever slime he infected her with to her grave. Where she thinks she'll lie forever, because she can't believe that any gods would ever have her, not after she invited Satan into her bed, and however fleetingly, aspired to be the Queen of Hell. Which, of course, coming from her womb makes me the Devil's own, the Antichrist; the son to whom the stain of Voldemort clings no matter who his father was. Then, of course, to add insult to injury he turned out to not be dead at all and took me under his wing. He sees me as the son he never had. And he tried to twist me into what he was and make me believe what he believes and he murdered my wife and my brother not because he's an evil comic opera villain, but because the bastard really does love me like a son, and he thought he was doing what was best for me. That's the real reason I didn't want him to know that you were my son. Because that would make you his beloved grandson, and trust me, Harry, it's much better for you to have Tom Riddle hate you than it is to have him love you. Your grandmother and I are living proof of that."

Snape, and the packet of fags, were both finished.

Harry was quiet, taking in the enormity of what Snape had just told him.

"Now I really want to kill him." Harry snarled, murderously.

"Oh don't worry. We will. Now, onto the plan, You're going on lay low with your grandparents for a little while during the investigation of this attempt on your life. Your homework will be sent to you via owl post, and your grandmother will home-school you for awhile. I expect you to do your homework and return it on time, not spend all your time running around with the witches and magi-curious Muggle girls that come to your grandmother's shop."

"Da, do you really think I can think of sex at a time like this?" Harry said, with mock indignation.

"What else should you be thinking of when you might be in the last days of your life? Quidditch?!" Snape replied.

Harry laughed a little, and so did Snape, but it was empty, hollow laughter.

The ghost of Tom Riddle's presence hung between them, like a malignant cloud.

"Da, when he's dead and you get everything he owns, I don't suppose you'd settle a little bread on me?" Harry asked, trying to dispel it.

"That depends on how well you can follow orders and stick to the plan." Snape answered.

"Are you kidding me? For that kind of money, shit, I'd kill Voldemort with a spoon while dressed in a pink tutu singing Frere Jacques." Harry squawked.

This time they shared genuine laughter; thinking about the spoils that were going to go to the victors.

Honour and glory are nice, and revenge is sweet, but none of that pays the bills.


	17. Satyricon

**Chapter Seventeen: ****Satyricon**

Later, when those involved would sit down with a quill and a few sheets of parchment, they would recall that the first hints that the seven seals were being broken came quite innocuously, during second period, on a Tuesday, when Harry Potter quietly assumed his seat for his 7th year Potions class.

He came in just as class was about to start.

"Mr. Potter, what is meaning of this?" Professor Snape demanded.

Hermione thought he was admirably keeping up his professional decorum.

"Sorry, Professor, but I was in the Headmaster's office. I didn't mean to disrupt your class." Harry replied.

Snape, who felt as though it was quite possible that his head was going to pop off which would result in the subsequent birth of a large Burroughsian bug from his neck, fell back on sarcasm to keep his composure.

"Oh please, Potter, disrupt away. If it doesn't bother you to come and sit in class like nothing has happened a few days after someone tried to murder you in your bed, then it's no skin off my nose, either, I'm sure." He replied.

"With all due respect, Professor, someone or the other has been trying to murder me in my bed since I was a baby. I may be a lot of 'fings, and many of them bad, but I've never been a coward, and I won't start, now." Harry said.

Neville actually stood up and started clapping, until Snape shot him a dirty look.

"Well spoken, Potter. I suggest, then, that you can assist Mr. Longbottom today, since you're feeling so brave. Books open to page 475. Today, please, the Apocalyspe is coming, after all, we haven't got all day." Snape snapped.

Privately, he was very proud of Harry, even though he thought his son's actions were incredibly stupid.

Snape was, however, inclined to overlook them, given the climate settling over Hogwarts.

***

Harry's brave and possibly suicidal grandstanding in the face of Armageddon seemed to usher it all in, that strange, brave, terrified and yet oddly elated feeling that the End of Days was nigh.

It made itself known in the younger students in schoolboy defiance. They weren't doing their homework; they talked back to teachers and stayed up past curfew and showed up late for class and talked out of turn while they were there. If the world was ending, why should they care, what reason was there to behave?

They yelled more, they fought more, they began to act like a tribe of Lost Boys and Lost Girls, united in an increasingly riotous disregard for authority

The older students behaved just as badly, but those who already had adult vices hit them a bit harder, and those who didn't acquired them. Booze was smuggled in by the crateload; the Ravenclaws had a still in one of their girl's lavatories, and illcit potions were being brewed in every secret nook and cranny.

Hogsmeade was choked with Hogwarts students, nightly. At the Hog's Head, where Aberforth Dumbledore would serve you beer and spirits if you were 17 or over and butterbeer at any age regardless of what day of the week it was and who you were, Dumbledore's brother had to hire some part-time help.

Over at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, business was booming. Fred and George hired Ron and Myrtle on to help out; the gods only knew he wasn't busy studying, and she knew it all by heart, by now.

Fidelity became laughable, and virginity more scarce by the second. The Infirmary had to make a rush order to Prince's Potions for more contraceptive potion as the doomed began to run wild. Madame Pomfrey also laid on a supply of remedies for all sorts of VD, hoping against hope against an outbreak of the dread Dragoniferous Crotch Rot.

On the other hand, the local Druidic Church in Hogsmeade was full to bursting for morning, evening and midnight ceremonies, every day. There was a rush of applications for the Priesthood, as well as a great flocking to the mystical and occult orders.

Everyone, it seemed was looking for a dose of something, whether it was the jack or that old time religion.

For whether they celebrated in mad Dionysian abandon, dancing with the nymphs and the satyrs at night in the snowy wood, revelling and deciding to eat, drink, fuck and be merry, or whether they crowded into the Church to worship the Great God Pan with more decorum, or even if they faced the apocalypse straight and sober, exulting on some Nietzschean plane in the inevitability of chaos and disorder, the finger of the Trickster god seemed to touch them all.

Indeed, all of Wizarding Britain seemed to be rushing with the children at Hogwarts like heedless lemmings into a great abyss. Diagon Alley was beginning to look like Knockturn Alley and Knockturn Alley was looking like something written by Burroughs and illustrated by Bosch.

And this goes without mentioning the sorts of things going on in America.

Albus Dumbledore and his steadfast Scottish wife may have been impervious to the seduction of disorder and chaos, but not all of the staff of Hogwarts could say the same.

Even Severus Snape, that most severe of disciplinarians, seemed to be relaxing his grip. He had, in the past few months, with his affair with Granger in the open and his reconciliation with his son, had a taste of freedom he hadn't experienced in almost 20 years. That, and, Severus was always a Dionysian sort of fellow, to whom entropy had always beckoned.

He had never been anything but an agent of chaos and disorder and found it impossible to crack the whip too zealously against his students. How could he admonish them for wanting to kick over the traces and run free when he wanted to do the same? He may not have been revelling in wood with the students, but he was unable, and unwilling to keep himself from the merry dance of doom.

Not when he, after all, was the piper who played the tune, and had taught them all the steps.

And then, of course, sex reared its shaggy head.

The acolytes of the First Church of Severus Snape, Sex God, became bolder in their religious obsequies. They dropped pencils in his path and bent quite far over to pick them up, showing him sexy knickers, or none at all.

They had difficulty with their homework assignments, and leaned over the desk with the first few buttons of their shirts undone, or stood close by the professor, bumping him with their tits, or resting them on his arm while they got their explanations.

Now, when he was a young professor in his early twenties, recently bereaved and trying to stay sober, not to mention never having had so many offers in all his ugly, junkie, Scouser days, Snape had left no skirt unturned.

He had, in those heady days been an equal opportunity shagger, giving the benefits of his considerable endowments and his Master Magus expertise to all witches of all shapes, sizes and ages over 16 who requested them.

Since around about 1982, however, he had decided that it was unprofessional at the least and suicidally reckless at the most to shag his students, especially considering that most of the girls who offered themselves to him had the brain of a turtle and loose enough lips to sink an armada.

All of this hard-earned wisdom, however, was quickly being pushed to the back of the Potions' Master's mind.

_This time next month, Snape, old boy, you ugly git, you may be nothing more than a portrait on the wall, staring wistfully at all those lovely, randy, empty-headed little teenage witches you might have had. Where's the harm in it? Who gets hurt? Who's to blame you when they go around shoving their tits in your face and parading their knickers or lack of them under your nose? And if you don't die, you'll end up a hero. A War Hero. Who's going to begrudge the saviour of the Wizarding World a bit of sweet teenage pussy? To the victors go the spoils. Let's live a little, before we die._

_Yes_, Snape thought to himself, _let's live a little. Let's get into a frenzied state of wild intemperate lust and start banging them two at a time, and forget the contraceptive spell half the time and take their word for it they've drunk a contraceptive potion, and fill every quim in the school up with spunk and put half the 5__th__, 6__th__, and 7__th__ year in the club. This is only the most important time in my life, the vengeance and justice and victory I've been orchestrating for twenty years, by all means why don't I fuck it all up because my brains have turned to mush and my spine to Jello since I've been fucking myself stupid, day and night. Won't that be nice, you fucking idiot?_

All that said, Snape was just a man, and, as fate is often a comedian, and a rather extremely oversexed one at that, he found it quite hard to keep his situation under control.

Thank the Great God Pan he had Hermione.

Frequently.

***

Yes, recklessness and the mad fever of wild abandon settled over Hogwarts and Hogsmeade like some kind of pervasive virus.

Professor Snape was in his office, grading papers at lunchtime, as he no longer dared walk the hallways when his fan club were milling about unsupervised, when he was paid a visit by Oriana Moon, the youngest sister of the infamous Diana Moon, both of Slytherin House.

Diana had become the youngest woman ever to become a Third Degree Sex Magus, an honour she achieved at 17, after a year of intensive study with her Sponsor and Head of House, Severus Snape.

Snape had been 24 at the time, and at the end of the year, he felt to be about 100, but as most men probably would have been dead, he considered it an achievement.

Diana had recently married another Scouser, Snape's father-in-law, Artie "Tommy Boy" Evans, former Lord of the Liverpool underworld and current King of Wandsworth prison, the only man incarcerated in same who got conjugal visits with his wife at a hotel every Saturday.

But that was neither here nor there.

What was here was Oriana, who was blond and blue-eyed where her sister had been dark, leaning over the arm of his chair, her rather sizable tits spilling out of her bra and her shirt, asking him a question she knew the answer to about Potions.

Leaning over the table with one foot off the floor, and her skirt flipping up and black and green lacy knickers covering the golden fleece, practically sitting in his lap.

Their mother was a Cornish wood nymph, and Snape was beginning to sweat, profusely.

He managed to keep a Stiff Upper Lip and get her out of the office, but not without considerable pain and suffering.

The only thing about Oriana was that, unlike her sister, she did indeed have the brain of a turtle, and as he was not the first to observe, girls who were both beautiful and stupid were often the worst lays.

The very idea that a creature as ravishing as Oriana Moon was probably a real dead fuck led Snape to truly believe that God was indeed a Trickster.

Then again, maybe he just had a letch for smart birds. Unless it was to be a twenty-minute relationship, Snape didn't like to get involved with stupid bints.

Now Hermione, she was absolutely brilliant, and she was probably the sexiest, horniest witch he'd ever met. She was like a one-woman porny review. If she had a headache, she put her faith in cock before Tylenol. Little Scouser Hermione.

The only thing on her as big as her brain was her tits.

Snape was attempting to drive any such thoughts from his mind, when a minor miracle occurred.

"Snape, I've been meaning to ask you about that Elvish potion we were working on; I always get the last step wrong…where's the fucking paper I wrote my notes on…"

Hermione had just come from the library.

She had a quill behind her ear and ink on her fingers. Her robe was buttoned wrong, her tie was loose, and one of her socks, which didn't match the other, had fallen down around her ankle. Her hair was mussed like she had been running her hands through it while she was thinking and she dribbled a trail of parchments behind her, swearing in her thick Scouse accent and chewing on her lower lip as she struggled to find the parchment she was looking for, in the bulldog grip of a scholarly pursuit.

One of the things that had attracted Snape to Hermione was her brilliance; and just about nothing got his Mojo working like seeing her at her most contemplative.

Hermione Granger, the thinking man's Lolita.

All of Hermione's papers were soon flying through the air, because she had been picked up and deposited on Snape's desk.

"Ooooo, Sev! In the classroom? On the desk? I thought you'd NEVER do that." Hermione commented.

She had been trying to get him to roger her on his desk in the classroom for the better part of two years.

"I wouldn't. Unless I was completely out of me wits. Which I am."

***

The door to the Potions classroom was not even locked, and it was the middle of the day.

In fact, Professor Snape had a class coming in right after lunch, and the lunch period was nearly over.

The door to the Potions classroom, of course, wasn't commonly locked in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, and the 4th years always had Potions right after lunch, so none of that was unusual or abnormal.

What was going on in the Potions classroom, however was not particularly abnormal, but it was certainly unusual.

Coherent thoughts did not usually assail Snape's mind when he was in the middle of a shag, especially a particularly muscular and enthusiastic one, but, momentarily reaching across Hermione and his desk to pick up the inkwell and stop a stack of papers falling over and push his sweat-soaked hair out of his face, Snape had an odd moment of clarity.

_The last time I did this in me classroom it was 1981. I was young, stupid, and trying to fuck my way through my grief over losing my wife and my brother-by-law and my son, and I was only a few years older than the girl I was putting it to. What's me excuse, now?_

Hermione started pounding on the desk and shouting, nothing coherent, just shouting, and, Snape's moment of clarity began to dissipate as the moment of coming his lot overtook him.

She was flailing her arms about, and pushing back against him with such force that Snape had to hold her down on the desk and brace himself against it with his free hand.

On second thoughts, he put his hand over her mouth.

_fuck, you dirty old tosser, this young girl is going to kill you _

Then, much to his horror, Snape realised he hadn't cast a contraceptive spell before he bent Hermione over the desk and flipped up her skirt and ripped off her knickers and starting humping away.

He had a sudden vision of Hermione with her school robes sticking out a mile from her distended belly, and John Granger on his way to the office with a cricket bat and a grudge.

Swearing mightily he pulled out, pushing himself away from Hermione and his desk with both hands.

Snape stumbled backwards, smacked his back against a lab table and fell into one of the students' chairs as his pants fell around his ankles, leaving a dribble of come here and a drop there, most of it gluing his cock to his leg, and some spattered onto his pants and his shoes.

Hermione, meanwhile, had tipped over the inkwell, and a stack of 4th year homework assignments had been saved by her hair and her shirt sopping up most of the ink.

She climbed down off the desk, her legs still trembling, picked up the remains of her knickers and tried to clean herself of ink and sweat and various fluids.

Her eyes met Snape's, and they exchanged incredulous looks.

"I do take a contraceptive potion, yunno."

"Better safe than Daddy."

"What the fuck is the matter with us?" Hermione suddenly demanded.

Snape stood up, and pulled up his pants.

"It's nothing, Granger. Only the End of the World. I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No. But I think I've got a splinter in me arse."

"Well, you'd best go into the storeroom and stay there till my class is over. I'll help you sort yourself out, then." He said, putting his teaching robe on.

"But Snape, I'm all over fucking ink and I have Charms in five minutes!"

"I can't do anything about that, right now, Granger. You can't walk out of here with your ripped knickers in the pocket of your robe half-covered in ink smelling like a six-man orgy. I'll write you out a pass."

"So, I'll use scourgify and the emergency shower."

"Make it quick. I'll write you out a pass, anyway, so that you don't get a late report. If you're embarrassed to go to the infirmary, I'll see to that splinter for you after dinner."

***

Hermione was late for Charms, which was unusual for her, and she blushed almost as red as Ron's hair when she gave Professor McGonagall the pass from Snape and scurried to her seat, as McGonagall pursed her lips and gave Hermione a knowing look.

"Where were you?" Ron demanded.

"I was working in the Potions lab." She lied.

"All through lunch? That Snape's a fucking slave driver." He commented.

Harry turned a snort of laughter into a discreet cough.

"More like a pile driver." Hermione muttered under her breath.

***

Considering that the term "Study Hall" usually translated into "Slytherin Sparring Match" for Ginny, Professor Binns, whose Study Hall it was, was relieved when Remus returned as DADA professor and Ginny started taking her Study Hall in his office.

She had hoped that his unreasonably puritanical attitude would wear off, eventually, but it never seemed to.

However, with the mad music of the Great God Pan in the air that he breathed, Lupin soon realised that his hypocrisy had to know some bounds.

Upon hearing the unmistakable low, guttural growl of a bull werewolf close to their ear, most people, let alone most women, would flee, screaming and hysterical, even if the man it issued from was in human form at the time.

Ginny, however, was not most people, and she began to purr, in kind.

To a lioness animagus and a werewolf, it was the language of love.

Or of lust, at least.

Remus Lupin closed his eyes.

He'd been recalling that purr to mind in his every waking hour for quite some time, and hearing it in his dreams. He'd fought a good fight, beyond the limit of human endurance, well-beyond the bounds of a werewolf's endurance, but now, regretfully, he was beaten.

Well, maybe not _too_ regretfully.

Ginny could have just used "divesto", but she wanted to make sure there was no backsliding on Remus' part, so she took her time getting slowly undressed as she walked over to the sofa and lay down on it.

Rabid, snorting like a bull in the ring, Lupin had his choice of _divesto_ or ripping his clothes to shreds.

With Ginny's long red hair trailing all around her, tendrils of it brushing the floor, he charged the couch.

"It's about fucking time." Ginny snarled in his ear.

At least it was Remus' free period, and he had locked his office door.

***

On the subject of suicidal recklessness, as the young man every Death Eater in the Wizarding World wanted to kill, and the recent victim of a nefarious murder plot, the last place Harry Potter should have been was Knockturn Alley.

For his part, though, Harry had never been afraid of same and he wasn't about to start now, and what a man's got to do, a man's got to do.

He wore his Artist's coat, and a cap pulled down over his face and walked swiftly, not because he was afraid for his life, but because his errand was one of the utmost secrecy.

Carrying the packages in the bottomless pockets of his Magus coat, Harry made his way through the tangled mews, and ancient buildings crammed together like rabbit warrens. Nostalgically, he stepped past shooting galleries he'd fixed in and doorways he'd flopped in, crumbling storefronts where he'd gambled away a small fortune on illegal duels or took part in them, himself, past abandoned buildings where he'd taken anonymous bar broads for cheap fucks on dirty mattresses in condemned flats.

Those were the days, when he was the King of Knockturn Alley, the boozing, brawling, balling Lord of the Underworld.

Harry decided that, when this war was over, he was going to take back his title, minus the booze and dope.

After all, you only live once, and Skele-Gro works on most things and there is a cure for Dragoniferous Crotch Rot.

When you've had it once, it's not so bad, catching it again.

He found himself at the address he was looking for, and swivelled his head around before getting out his wand and giving the door of the crumbling Victorian tenement the password.

He walked down, down, down, several flights of stairs, deep into the splendour of the Old City that the maze of slapdash Victorian Brickwork that became Knockturn Alley was built on.

Below the filthy streets lay a whole other world that none of the clean shirts and regular mornings brigade had never seen.

He walked the ancient streets until he came to a cul de sac, and a proud old Restoration house which was only one of a few in the Old City that was lit by candlelight.

He knew the password for that door, too, and made his way up a staircase to the flat where the candles burned.

The door opened.

There she was.

She always had been a good-looking woman, in a hard, brassy, sort of way. And her blonde hair didn't come from a bottle, nor did her tits come from the store.

"Rita! Baby, I've missed you…"

"…not in the hallway, Harry."

Rita Skeeter ushered Harry into the flat, and closed the door.

***

"You seem almost disappointed I never ended up cornered by some lifer lesbian when I was at Azkaban. They're not like the pretty little girls in the fuck flicks, you know. Not in real life."

She didn't ask before she took one of Harry's fags from the packet on the nightstand, she never asked.

"Did you get what you wanted, though?"

"Of course I done. I always get what I want, you know that. When this article comes out about the real truth behind the so-called "new" Azkaban, I can kiss the gossip trade goodbye, forever. It'll be hard news for me from here on out. And it'll see to it that more of those bastard Death Eaters swing, rather than get off easy with life."

Harry watched Rita admiringly, as she sat up in bed, smoking and scheming.

"It'll be hard news for you again, soon enough."

"What about you, Potter? How did your end come out?"

"Like a fuckin' charm. You were right, Rita. Nowadays, a young guy can scream, 'O no, she touched me' just as loud as a bird can, and get the same results. Mind, I don't like being thought of as Poor Little Potter, but it kept me out of Azkaban. Still, I feel bad about putting that over Lord Malfoy. I didn't know what happened to him, when he was a kid."  
"You did what you had to do. Malfoy will understand. Did old Snape ever fall for it?"

"No. He thinks I sent you up the river because you promised to give me bread or dope or something for a favour or a story and you burned me. How the fuck did you get out of Azkaban, anyway?"

"The same way everybody does. They only broke Malfoy out last summer for effect. I paid for a parole. I'm on the street, free and legal as you please?"

"So what are you doing down here?"

"Writing. And waiting for just the right time to surface. Thanks for bringing me the supplies. You know I'm good for the money."

"Forget it."

"So, you're really sober now, are you?"

"Yeah."

"Good. It got a hold on you, Potter. If I would have thought that was going to happen…"

"Shit, Rita, you know I didn't have my first drink at your flat."

"Well, you had too many of them. And I should have waited until you were a little older, but, goddamnit, you looked like a man, didn't you?"

"I wouldn't have let you wait."

"I'm still smoking, Potter."

Harry took the cigarette out of her mouth, and put it in the ashtray on the nightstand.

"Fucking right you are. Let me show you what sobriety has done for me." He said

***

Professor Trelawney was so engrossed in grading a set of papers for her new class that she hardly noticed that the only other professors in the Faculty Lounge with her were Professor Snape and Professor Lupin.

Professor Snape was poring over an ancient grimoire of dubious origin, and Professor Lupin was grading his neatly organised papers in his usual methodical way.

For some reason, Professor Trelawney found herself thinking about her misspent youth, when she and Moony and Toby had, along with Cissy Black, Luke Malfoy and Arabella Baxter had founded of the Order of the Satyr, presided over by Severus Snape, whom she called Toby, as he didn't want her to call him Sev and she always laughed at inopportune times calling him Severus. Although its membership encompassed witches and wizards both sides of the First Wizarding War, they had all by that point been far more interested in sex, drugs and rock and roll and a generally depraved and hedonistic lifestyle than politics.

They met in Snape's dungeon, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at which time he either removed the glamour from his satyr's horns or used a glamour to affect them, and did their best to live up to their motto "Those who live high together, die together."

Nowadays, they were all sober, and the Order was more a magical cabal that it was an excuse for shagging, however, in that all the members were Sex Magi, there was some shagging going on.

Quite a bit, actually. Sirius wasn't all wrong in complaining that the Order of the Satyr was nothing more than a "jumped-up swingers club."

At least they'd never been into orgies.

Too complicated.

Still, Moony hadn't been much fun since he got married, though. All of the sudden he'd become a terrible prude, and it wasn't as if it was his wife's doing. It might be worth it, after he graduated, letting Harry Potter join. He was, after all, in training to be a Sex Magus, and…

…and Sirius was right. She and Cissy and Arabella all wanted to get their hands on him in the worst way.

And if Ginny Weasley and Moony's wife both joined up, that would surely shift Moony out of his prudery

They both wanted to join the Order, as well.

Sibyl shook her head as if to dispel such thoughts.

_What's the matter with me, thinking about getting me legs around Harry Potter? Good Gods, what am I, the naughty schoolmistress in some porny? It's not as if I'm not getting any, between re-uniting with Sirius and Order Meetings. _

_There must be something in the air._

She looked at Moony and Toby and recalled one night in the years of their sordid past in which everyone was passed out but the three of them, and they had conducted her over to the dirty mattress upon which Toby commonly crashed and proceeded, albeit with as little physical contact between each other as possible, to make her a very happy woman.

Sibyl tried to think of Sirius, her fiancé, but that old end-of-the-world feeling was in the air again as the Last Battle drew ever nearer, and the salacious memory filled her mind, inexorably.

"What are you thinking about, Sibyl?" Professor Snape asked.

He was grinning at her in an evil lopsided leer; Toby knew her well enough to know exactly what she was thinking about.

"Nothing, Professor Snape. Nothing at all." she replied, as businesslike as possible

"Oh, so now I'm Professor Snape. I like that. Don't give me that bollocks. I know precisely what you are thinking about. Don't you, Remus?"

"I certainly do. I can smell you thinking about it all the way across the room." Remus joked.

"Those were the days, weren't they?" Professor Trelawney joked, and Professor Lupin also laughed, dismissively.

Snape wasn't letting it go at that.

As Hermione had so succinctly put it, if these were to be her last days on the planet, she wanted to spend as much of them as humanly possible either fucking or eating.

Snape had just finished lunch.

"Were they? I prefer the present. What about it, Moony? I don't think anyone's in the Room of Requirement. And we've all got an hour before our next class."

"Are you mad, Snape? Are you out of your fucking mind? Certainly not! Sibyl, you wouldn't?" Remus stammered.

"Oh yes I would." Professor Trelawney replied.

"Has the whole world gone mad?" Lupin asked, melodramatically.

"Haven't you ever heard of get it while you can?" Sibyl asked him.

Remus Lupin gathered up his papers, his dignity, and his only slightly and recently besmirched moral fiber, and situated them all directly in front of his flies.

"I'm going back to me office." He said.

After he left in a huff, Sibyl began to laugh.

"Toby, when did Loony Moony become the President of WHAP? I could go back to the days of our misspent youth, but it was only two years ago that he was shagging Ginny Weasley rotten, occasionally on school grounds." She chuckled.

"Since he got married, his hypocrisy knows no bounds. Maybe it's good that someone has a moral compass. I don't. Well?"

"If this is going to be the last time, I think I want more than fifty minutes of your time, Toby. Have you a free night, this week? And I don't mean on our meeting night" Sibyl asked.

"How's Wednesday?" Snape replied.

"Will you have the horns?"

"Certainly."

***

Tom Riddle couldn't have been happier about the shapes of things.

It was just as Severus had predicted. Crazed with fear, the usually staid Wizarding World had erupted into a veritable orgy of sex, violence, boozing, doping and a state close to complete anarchy.

This was very close to the state he wanted to keep them in, so it was quite convenient for him.

Not to mention that the climate of paranoia and abandon was just the right time for him to defeat a demoralised Dumbledore; while the old fool's supposedly steadfast young soldiers slumbered in surfeit.

Then, of course, he would take his true form, calm a panicked populace, lay the blame for all the hysteria on Albus Dumbledore's unreasonably puritanical propaganda, and bend them to his will.

Tom Riddle appeared in the hearth in his heir's parlour via floo powder, and was bemused to see Severus sprawled unconscious on the sofa, snoring like a great goat.

It was ten minutes before Severus heard Lord Voldemort calling him, and stumbled over to the hearth, wrapping himself in the blanket he had been lying under to cover his nakedness.

"Perhaps you ought to consider it a success and take the next two days off, Sev." Lord Voldemort chuckled.

"I must be getting old, Tom. I'm completely knackered. I can hardly move."

"Perhaps you're just dehydrated. Get some good sleep tonight, I'll be meeting you tomorrow in the Shrieking Shack to discuss the strategy for our attack on Friday."

"When?" Snape asked.

"Oh, about six in the afternoon, I should say. Put yourself back together, Severus. I'll see you in the morning. I'll bring some of my special rejuvenation potions with me. You don't look well. I think you've thrown yourself far too…wholeheartedly into your duties. Where's the chief object of your affections?"

"Granger has been asleep for eighteen hours." Snape answered.

Lord Voldemort began to laugh.

"Good show, Severus! I don't think you're getting old at all. Until tomorrow, then."

They said their good nights, and then the fire went red and yellow again.

Hermione came out of the bedroom.

"Is he buying it?" she asked.

"Of course he is."

Hermione frowned.

"I wish we were up to what everyone thinks we're up to in here. I mean, not that we haven't been busy, but…"

"Wait until the war is over, Granger. We'll debauch ourselves, thoroughly."

***

In some part, the breathless Satyricon was all part of Snape and Dumbledore's Master Plan.

They knew that Voldemort was planning the ultimate double cross. He was going to send the most rabid of his Death Eaters, along with giants, werewolves and trolls to march on Hogwarts.

His forces expected to face a demoralised, debauched and disorganised rabble, when in reality they would find themselves outnumbered by a well-trained, well-disciplined commando unit, not just of witches and wizards, but with a plan of attack coming on several waves from several vantage points, led by a core of battle-hardened duellers and the Master Magi who had trained them.

It was going to be a slaughter.


	18. Flesh and the Devil's Own

**Chapter 18: Flesh and the Devil's Own**

Just as the hysteria at Hogwarts and in the Wizarding World in general was reaching its heights, the Headmaster called for an Assembly of all students in the Great Hall.

"The time is for the final battle against Lord Voldemort is coming. You may think that my first priority is winning, but my first priority is all of you, and your safety. It is for this reason that, the train will be leaving from platform 9 ¾ a bit earlier than usual this year. I am sending all students under the age of 17 home. Exceptions will be made for those of you who are 16, and either have a rank of First Degree or above in one or more of the Five Disciplines, or who are in Dumbledore's Army. As for the older students, I will have to require that any of you who are not in Dumbledore's Army, have an average less than an A in Defence Against the Dark Arts and Charms, have not been taking Advanced Defence Against the Dark Arts, or are not at least an Acolyte or Initiate in Magick of the Arts, only, return home as well. And, as much as it pains me to do so, I must ask all students who are, or whose families are allied with Lord Voldemort or his Death Eaters to depart. When this war is over, and I hope to be able to welcome you back as well. No one is beyond forgiveness, understanding, or dare I say, redemption. No matter who wins, the victor will have work to do to reunite the Wizarding World.

Now, I know you all want to be brave, and fight, and you want to be present at some great battle, like those you read about in the histories. But, I invite you to recall that it was not the clash of great armies that brought the evil of Sauron to heel, it was two brave young hobbits on an impossible quest. Our victory will be something more on that order. Now, before I continue this address, I'll have to ask the students I mentioned to leave the assembly, and start preparing to go home. Now, no long faces. As soon as the war is over, you'll all be back, and your professors will expect to you have finished your homework assignments, which will arrive via owl post. I want to see you all back here, alive and well, and free of the terrible tyranny of this awful war. The best thing you can do to win this war is to go to your homes and your families where you will be safe, and let our Fellowship do it's great work, so that you all may soon safely return."

Dumbledore allowed for a brief period of confusion, tears, promises, and goodbyes.

The Great Hall didn't look so great with only 30 or so students left sitting around their house tables, and George and Fred Weasley arriving livened things up a little, but, the Hall still looked empty.

Ron looked around at his sister, and his brothers, and Neville and Dean and Seamus, and Hermione and Angelina and Paravati and Harry.

They were all looking at him, for some reason.

He looked over at the skeleton crew sitting at the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables, then at the Slytherin table.

He expected it to be empty, but Malfoy was there, and Crabbe and Goyle, and Pansy Parkinson, and even Blaise Zabini.

"Wot are you lookin' at, Weasel?" Crabbe insisted.

"Shouldn't you lot be leaving?" Ron asked.

"Not 'alf. We're wif Draco. All of us. If 'e's wif you, so are we." Crabbe said, loyally.

Ron didn't know what to say.

That's when Neville got up and walked across the room and went and sat at the Slytherin table, right beside Crabbe.

"Well, there's so few of us, we might as well sit at the same table." He said.

Neville was soon joined by the balance of the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who were to remain at Hogwarts to fight.

"Now that we're all here, and we're all together, let's have the other defenders join us." Dumbledore suggested.

The doors to the Great Hall opened and a jaw-dropping array of witches, wizards and their allies entered the room.

The first were all the members of the Order of the Phoenix who were not already present. Then, Master Magi of every age and gender, and some of different races, like centaurs, satyrs, and Elves. They came in grouped by one discipline at a time. Then the Battle Orders of the Knights of Albion, werewolves, elves, dwarves, centaurs, giants, in their regimental order from Centurians down to Yeomen.

These were followed by the Vampires of the Order of the Dragon, and last but not least, the most powerful cabal of magicians in the Wizarding World, the Seven Guitar Wizards, all of whom were Masters in the Third Degree in all of the Five Disciplines, a pedigree that no other cabal could boast.

The assembled students were in awe.

"I thought they'd look older." Ron said.

"They have to pass as Muggles, so they all use an age glamour." Ginny replied.

"How would you know?" Ron squawked.

"Erm…they're all big Quidditch fans." She said.

"By the Mother! Not all seven of them!" Ron squawked.

"Well, not in the same week, or anything. Sharrup, you, it's me hobby!" Ginny shot back.

"Do you think you could get us a support gig with the Who? Or Clapton's band, maybe?" Fred asked his sister.

"Fred!" Ron protested.

"Don't be such a fucking prude, Ron! A hand up is a hand up." George told him.

"I can try, if you lot have a CD or a sound vial." Ginny replied.

"Harry, give us a hand, 'ere!" Ron continued.

"Snape's been telling me he'll introduce me to the Seven for years, but he never does. Could you get us backstage passes?" Harry asked.

"Sure."

Ron was about to protest louder, but then Dumbledore continued to speak.

"Are we all here and settled? Good." The Headmaster continued.

Now, as you students can see, you'll won't be fighting Voldemort and his Death Eaters alone. All together, we number about a hundred, but, I might add, we have forces stationed all over Britain, as well. Now, for the next few weeks your normal classes will be suspended, and you'll be doing drills and manoeuvres, and being briefed on our plans. As for our distinguished guests, I've seen most of your faces before, only younger and spottier. I'd like to welcome you all back to Hogwarts. For our friends in the Knights of Albion, who are of the non-human persuasion, welcome to Hogwarts. If you like it here, and you think your children will, as well, I'd like to invite you to send them here for magical training." Dumbledore added.

"Dwarves and all?" a rather distinguished dwarf piped up.

"Why not? Me sister's about your size!" Fred commented.

"Belt up, or I'll belt you!" Ginny replied.

"Yes. Dwarves and all. You see, I think that one of the reasons that Tom's neo-Nazi philosophy took root so easily because of the ridiculous divisions that have sprung up between magical beings. There was a time when men, elves, dwarves, giants, centaurs, satyrs, all magical beings lived together, if not in harmony, then companionably. Somehow we strayed from that path, as a society. This concerted effort to rid the world of Tom Riddle shouldn't be the end of our new alliance, it should be the beginning. So yes, all of your children are invited to begin attending Hogwarts, dwarves and all." the Headmaster finished.

He got a considerable amount of applause from his audience, and when it had died down came the part that the students liked the best.

"So, while we sort out our guests living arrangements, I think I'll cancel classes for the rest of the night, so everyone can begin their Hogsmeade week early. Students, dismissed."

Dumbledore was about to finish his briefing, but most of his guests looked like they wouldn't mind going to Hogsmeade either, so he just announced the living arrangements.

Meanwhile, Ron had gotten into a giant argument with Harry and Fred and George over Ginny's honour, which gave Draco the excellent opportunity to sally forth with his opinion that Ginny didn't have any honour, because he really wanted to get into the argument.

"Do you want to make it a Girl's Night Out, then?" Ginny asked Hermione.

"That's a very good idea." Hermione agreed

***

Ginny and Hermione had a lovely Girl's Night Out in Hogsmeade, and they made their leisurely way back towards Hogwarts, late in the evening.

Ginny and Hermione were talking about getting Dobby to fix them a late dinner when they got back to the castle when, in an abrupt and rather dramatic fashion, a black and red coach drawn by six black horses emerged from the mist as if it had always been there, and yet had never been there in the first place.

"That couldn't be who I think it is. He's not real, is he?" Hermione asked Ginny.

"Oh yes he is." Ginny replied.

The coach stopped for them, and its occupant opened the door.

"Good evening, ladies. Terribly foggy tonight, isn't it? It's sure to rain, soon. I think. Or perhaps snow. Yes, it's too cold for rain. Still it's no night for two young ladies to be walking abroad, alone. Can I offer you a ride as far as the Whomping Willow? That is, after you ladies can have some really good butterbeer and perhaps a good meal, at my estate. I have a little business I'd like to discuss with you, and I've been trying to get you alone for the longest time. This isn't a crude attempt at seduction and I mean you no harm. I assure you, any friend of Severus Snape is a friend of mine, Miss Granger. And , Ginervra, we're old friends, aren't we? You know you've nothing to fear from me."

Hermione looked at the man in the coach in the moonlight.

He was a distinguished looking fellow in the prime of life, immaculately dressed in clothing that combined the nattiest and most fashionable aspects of Muggle suits and wizard's robes. He had exquisitely barbered black hair greying slightly at the temples, and a neatly goatish Van Dyke beard.

His eyes were greenish-yellow, and his pupils very black indeed.

On seven of his ten fingers, there were seven familiar golden Rings.

"Don't get in the coach. It's the Devil." Hermione whispered to Ginny decided.

Ginny hadn't seen him for five years, and he had been much younger, then, but she recognised him right away.

"It would be better for us if it was the Devil. 'Ello, Tom. 'Ow 'ave you been keepin' yourself, then?" she replied, coolly.

"Is that any way for you to talk to me, my dear? Now, Ginervra, you should know that I never had any real intention of killing you. It was all part of my plan. I did tell you that when you were older, I'd be back for you. And here I am. I always keep my promises, you know that. As for you, Miss Granger, you needn't fear me. As you can see I'm not some horrible monster, or some comic-opera villain. Besides, I'm sure you know what a great insult it would be to Severus if you refused to accept my offer?" the Dark Wizard cajoled.

Ginny and Hermione just looked at each other.

They both had the feeling that they could go the easy way, or the hard way, but he wasn't talking no for an answer.

"Certainly, we'll accept your invitation, Mr. Riddle. Severus wouldn't have it any other way." Hermione said, coolly.

"Capital. Please, allow me to help you into the coach."

***

Dinner was actually quite good, and their surroundings at Voldemort's estate, wherever it was, were quite lavish, and not at all what you would have expected.

He lived like a wealthy country gentleman, not a spook in a draughty old castle.

It seemed that crime did pay, handsomely.

After dinner, Lord Voldemort had brandy, and Ginny and Hermione some of the best butterbeer they had ever tasted.

"I have been keeping my eye on the both of you, these past few years. Miss Granger, I have been very impressed with your performance as my heir's apprentice. Unlike his previous choice of a woman to align himself with, I quite approve. As for you, Ginervra, the promise I saw in you when you were a child on the cusp of womanhood has been quite fulfilled. The problem is, for both of you, of course, that with the Wizarding World being what Albus Dumbledore wishes it to be, I don't think either of you can reach your full potential as magi. Albus is a conservative man; he likes to cling to the old and the outdated. Not to mention the irrelevant. And what could be more irrelevant to magical beings than the tired old codes of Muggle morality that even Muggles largely ignore, these days? Albus is a man for his century, the 19th. Possibly even the 18th. As for me, I'm a 21st century sort of fellow. I do not wish to destroy the Wizarding World; I want to free it, to bring it into Now. I say, why shouldn't a wizard, or a Muggle for that matter, be able to be free to do as he wishes? Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, as my old comrade Aleister always says. I did invite him to this little party, but I'm afraid he had business, elsewhere. Never mind, I'm sure there will be plenty of time for all of us to meet. But I digress. And, in less lofty terms, if this Muggle or that wizard has the cash to pay for it, why shouldn't he be able to buy himself a good time? What business has a society to legislate the morality of its citizens? I know you both agree with that point, I've read the paper you wrote about the repeal of the Drugs and Potions Act of 1911. Very convincing. And, more importantly, why should magical beings chain themselves to the outdated notions of White Magic and Black Magic? These divisions are artificial. There is only one Magick. To divide it is to thwart your own potential; to deny yourself the power that you, as a magical being, deserve. All I propose to do if I win this war is to free the Wizarding World from the artificial constraints that outdated notions of good and evil have imposed on it. Do you understand?" Voldemort asked.

"So all this business about purity of blood is just a red herring?" Hermione asked.

"Certainly. A very lucrative red herring. And, by all means, don't cancel your plans for battle. The more of my faintly ridiculous aristocratic supporters you kill off during the war, the less I'll have to put to death, later." Voldemort chuckled.

"After you make it look like they were the fanatics driving this whole conflict, them and Albus Dumbledore and his puritanical, old-fashioned ways." Ginny added.

"Of course! And with all of the above dead and discredited and the Wizarding World in chaos, who but Tom Riddle, distinguished and engaging moral relativist and purveyor of bread and circuses, emerging from his chrysalis as the fearsome Lord Voldemort, will they turn to for guidance?" Hermione added.

"Very good, ladies. You've almost got it all."

Ginny couldn't help but smile, it was so diabolical.

"And with Harry Potter on your side, who would doubt you?" Ginny added.

"Harry Potter, who after falling under the influence of Severus Snape, will be all too malleable after the death of his mentor, Albus Dumbledore, and the late Headmaster's cause." Hermione finished.

"You truly are the most brilliant witches in your year. You have such diabolical minds. It would be a shame to see you swept onto the dust heap of history with my unfortunate aristocratic pawns, and the Dumbledore faithful. Think carefully about your options. Dumbledore offers you an empty moral victory, and a lifetime as a cog in the Ministry of Magic's wheels. I'm offering you power, position, and, of course, wealth. Considerable power and wealth. There are always opportunities, in a new society, to become the new aristocracy. Look at me. I was an offshoot of a rather degenerate branch of an old and reviled Wizarding family and a Muggle of no importance. And now, I am Lord Voldemort."

Riddle paused and laughed to himself at his own little joke, and poured himself another drink.

"He's _mad_! Barking mad!" Hermione whispered to Ginny.

"I know." Ginny replied.

"Now, where was I? Ah yes, after I've defeated Dumbledore's rabble of students and misguided loyalists, you ladies can be with me, or against me. I don't need your answer now, but the next time we meet; well, I only hope that you will do as your friend Harry Potter will assuredly do. The reasonable thing. Now, let's all have another drink, and then my coachman will return you to Hogwarts."

"I think I'll have a drop of brandy in my butterbeer, if that's alright." Hermione replied.

"Me too. After all that, I need a fucking drink." Ginny agreed.

***

It wasn't raining, as Lord Voldemort had suspected, but it had begun to snow quite heavily, as his coach disappeared into the mists from whence it had come after he dropped Ginny and Hermione off in the Hogwarts' courtyard.

They stood for quite some time, shivering and hanging onto one another, for what reasons neither could fathom.

Then, all of the sudden, they broke away from one another and started running in opposite directions.

Hermione bolted for the safety of Hogwarts, but Ginny ran, quite literally, screaming into the night.

***

Even though his master seemed far less cruel and capricious lately, Keegan, the Malfoy's house-elf-in-chief was still loath to go into Master and Mistress' bedroom and awaken his Master in the middle of the night.

He approached the bed, gingerly and began tugging on the curtains.

"Master? Master Lucius wakes up, please. Miss Poppy is here and she is very upset. Something is very bad. Much wrong."

Much to Keegan's chagrin, it was Mistress Narcissa who woke up, and parted the bed-curtains, pulling the sheets up to her neck.

"Do you mean Miss Weasley, Keegan?"

"No! No. Keegan doesn't know who you mean!"

"Keegan, I know who my husband's mistress is. I keep telling you that he and I have an understanding about such things. Besides, the girl is practically my sister-by-law. Wake up, Luke. Put something on. Keegan says there's something wrong with Ginny."

Lord Malfoy was slow to wake.

"What? Where? At the school? Why are they telling me, and not Molly or Arthur?" he muttered.

"It's nothing to do with the school, Luke. She's here." Narcissa explained.

"Here? Now? At this hour? What for?"

Just then, the Malfoys and their house elf heard a wild scream coming from downstairs, followed by mad laughter, and the sounds of some poor soul gibbering in what seemed like mortal terror.

"You see, Master? Somethings is very wrong with Miss Poppy!" Keegan insisted.

"Balor's eye!" Luke swore, and he quickly put his robe on and followed Keegan down several hallways and the main staircase.

Ginny was pacing in front of the hearth in the parlour, a wild look in her eye.

She didn't have on her winter cloak, or her gloves, just her robes, which were all torn, and she was all over scratches where her skin was bare, like she had been running blindly through the woods for the gods only knew how long.

Ginny rushed into his arms as soon as she saw him, and hugged him like she was trying to crawl into his body with him.

Luke had never known Ginny to be afraid of anything, let alone terrified; it terrified him to see her in such a state.

"Ginervra, what's the matter? What's happened to you?" he asked.

"He's the Devil, Luke! I've seen him, he's the Devil. I've sat in his house and eaten from his plates and listened to his plans and it's worse, it's so much worse. He's the Devil. We can't kill him, we'll just have to send him back to Hell. Forever. But not Harry. What can Harry do? He's just a kid. We're all just kids. We need Snape. And Dumbledore. We need and army of Snapes and Dumbledores. Muggle stuff, too. Tanks. Planes. A-bombs. Priests from every religion. Any religion. You and Snape you have to help us. Because he's the Devil, the real Honest to the Gods Devil, the Mother preserve me, he's the Devil from Hell! I told myself a million times he wasn't, but I knew he was. I knew he was. He was so cold. So very cold. He'll kill us all, and take our souls to Hell with him, because he's the Devil! He is. I saw him. I saw what he really looks like. I could smell the sulphur! It wasn't my imagination, it wasn't just the stink in the Chamber. It was him! He's the Devil!" She gibbered.

Narcissa came down the staircase.

"By the Mother! What's happened?" she asked.

"Somehow, that bastard Riddle got to her. I don't know what he's done to her. I'll take her back to Hogwarts, she needs a healer."

"He's the Devil. You have to watch for him, because he's the Devil." Ginny told Narcissa.

"I always thought so, too." Narcissa agreed.

***

Meanwhile, Hermione was completely confused.

She had no idea what was going on at Hogwarts, anymore.

Almost everyone had been sent home, there were suddenly all these powerful witches and wizards and shape-shifters and Magical Creatures and dwarves and elves and so on about. Snape was acting more secretive than ever; the war was supposed to have started a few days ago and he was telling her less than nothing.

Now Lord Voldemort was not really Lord Voldemort, and he was riding around impersonating Satan and asking her to dinner at his rather nice country house and putting forth some kind of crackpot nihilistic scheme for worldwide anarchy curbed only by Social Darwinism, with himself as the ringmaster and chief beneficiary, which was somehow even more insane than the neo-fascist idyll he was putting forth as…

As what? A cover?

Then, as she made her way to the secret entrance to Snape's dungeon, she saw Hagrid with a lantern over-seeing a group of trolls and giants digging a series of trenches and extremely large pits.

"What the fuck is going on around here?" she asked the air.

A few minutes later, she arrived in Snape's dungeon.

He and Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore, two of his Guitar Wizard mates, were parked in front of the telly, watching _Absolutely Fabulous_.

Hermione walked by them all, very quietly, went into the bathroom and drew a bath.

***

They must have taken the hint, because when Hermione came out of the bathroom, Severus was alone.

"Did you have a good time, tonight?' he asked, absently.

Hermione stood in front of the telly and turned it off.

"Yes. Until I was kidnapped by Satan, I mean Tom Riddle, I mean Lord Voldemort. Then, Ginny and I attended the maddest tea party since Alice went to Wonderland, and heard the craziest scheme this side of the Red Queen. That was before I walked past Hagrid supervising trenches and pits being dug in the cold ground in the middle of the night. Nothing makes any sense anymore. I don't even knw what this war is about, or who it's against or why, at this point. Just what the fuck is going on around here, Snape?"

Snape sighed, and swore.

"I thought he might do something like that. Let me give you the short version. Tom Riddle is, as you've observed, is both profoundly evil and completely mad. I don't think he was ever a sane or a decent man, but he was rather in the same faintly ridiculous league as his good friend Crowley until around World War II. Riddle spent the whole of the Thirties in Egypt and the Far East looking for an original copy of the _Necronomicon_, and, unfortunately for him and the rest of the world, he found what he was looking for, in the Mad Arab's own handwriting."

Snape paused to get a cigarette.

"I can assure you that Hell holds no surprises for Tom Riddle, but whatever beings he called upon or realms he visited or obscene knowledge he gained put him right around the twist. He came back to England, applied to be Hogwarts DADA professor, and fell in love for the first and last time in his perverted and twisted life, with his best friend's 13-year old daughter, my mother. After they became engaged, she was the first one he outlaid his mad plan to, and in far more gruesome and horrifying detail than he did to you, this evening. It was enough to send her fleeing into the Muggle world to abort Voldemort's child, rush into the dubious but understanding arms of my crazy father and become a junkie for the next fifteen years or so. She was only 15 herself at the time. Needless to say, Tom didn't get the DADA job, either."

"And that was the last straw?" Hermione asked.

"Evidently. He came up with the "I Am Lord Voldemort" scheme after finding the phrase in one of his old schoolbooks, and began to finance his plot with pureblood money and ill-gotten gains from the worst kind of vices. Of course, when you mix Black Magic with the rackets, hard drugs, murder, sadism and white slavery, then the real fun begins. People started to die in appalling numbers, until Harry stopped the old demon in his diabolical tracks. Someday I'll tell you the long version, Granger, but never the metaphysical core of it. What he found in that obscene book in the ancient desert needs to die with the old sinner."

Snape actually looked horrified.

"What does he want to do, raise Great Cthulu from the depths of R'yleh? Caper in the desert with Nyartholep, the Crawling Chaos and an army of Shoggoths? Open a portal for blind idiot Azathoth to re-enter the world?" Hermione asked, sarcastically.

"Child's play for the likes of Tom Riddle. And you won't be so fucking glib about it once you've seen a shoggoth." Snape warned her.

"I don't believe in all that Elder Gods and _Necronomicon_ nonsense. Even Muggles know that it's all made up. They're very good stories, but they're not real. If Tom Riddle does, he's a madder fool than he seems to be. So, why does he go about impersonating Satan?" Hermione replied.

Without knocking, Remus Lupin opened Snape's door.

"Sorry, Severus. You had better come to Dumbledore's office. Something horrible has happened to Ginny."

"Don't believe, do you? Come with me, Granger. We'll soon make a believer out of you."

***

Ginny had been to the infirmary where she was treated for her bruises and scratches and a few calming draughts had done their work.

Still, she was sticking to her story, even though she cold tell that her audience thought she'd gone stark raving loony.

"Look, I'm not the most religious witch in the world, but I know the Devil when I see him. And that man, Tom Riddle, is not a man. He's the Devil Incarnate. And if he's not the Devil, he's related. Literally. His breath his hot as fire; if you look into his black pupils you can see the fire behind them in his green and yellow devil eyes. He smells overpoweringly of sulphur and offal and doom. I can't explain it. It's like a rotting grave, like an ocean of blood, like a huge pit of unburied corpses, rotting and festering and stinking in the hot sun under the open sky. I know. Don't ask me how I know, but I know. I tried for years to tell myself that I was wrong, but now I know for sure. An animal has an instinct for evil. You can see it and smell it, just like an ordinary person can see or smell a flower in a pot. That man is not just evil; I'm telling you that he's an actual, literal demon, he's the fucking spawn of Hell. He's the Devil."

Lucius Malfoy, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, Severus Snape, and Albus Dumbledore were left looking uncomfortably at the Gryffindor lioness.

"I thought it was my imagination, but, not to bring up a sore subject, I could smell sulphur, and the stench of death in the Department of Mysteries." Lupin interjected.

"But isn't this a bit ridiculous? How could Tom Riddle be the Devil?" Sirius snorted.

"Well, he's not the actual Devil. He could be a demon, or a hybrid of a human and demon. My mother has always maintained that there's something demonic about Tom Riddle. I know him better than all of you, and I've always thought it to be so. I just never said anything about it . People think she's mad when she says it, so I kept me mouth shut." Snape added.

Lucius finally decided to speak up.

"Your mother was right, Severus. I've been a victim of the man at his most bestial. To save Miss Weasley from recounting a terrible childhood trauma, let me say that Riddle has many of the physical manifestations of demonic heritage. His body is extremely cold. Like a corpse, and his breath is as hot as flame. Not to mention that …sex with him is unbelievably unpleasant and disgusting. The process is painful, because his…organ, is very long, and it's not normal, it's…knobbly. And colder than the rest of him is. His, ah, erm, ejaculate is like ice water, and yet it burns the inside of your body where it touches you. An encounter with him made your whole body go zero at the bone and filled you with intense physical loathing. It was as if you could never be clean, or warm, ever again. He didn't have to be brutal, or sadistic; he never tried to be either, it was just that he was so physically repellent and alien and completely unconcerned with the effect his loathsome attentions had on you…like you were some kind of convenient human spittoon for his ghastly enjoyment. I don't think he is Satan, himself, but of Hell and from Hell, the spawn of some Demon, from what I know of Demonology, which is much, that seems entirely possible."

Lucius Malfoy spoke with some difficulty, and when he was done, everyone in the room was giving him a mingled look of pity and horror.

"Don't you fucking look at me like that! I don't need your pity!" he spat.

"We can't help but feel sorrow for you, Lucius. No one should have to endure such an ordeal. Especially not a young boy."

"Do you mean, that when she was a child…when you were a child…" Sirius began.

He couldn't finish. No wonder Malfoy was so fucked up. He thought back to their schooldays, and how Malfoy was always such a haughty son of a bitch. The hideous image of Tom Riddle battening himself onto a cowering, terrified young Malfoy, or any number of his other youthful recruits turned Sirius stomach.

It made him think of his days in Azkaban. He was a grown man, a powerful wizard with a fearsome reputation; and still, he'd had to kill one would-be rapist to back the others down.

What defence did a boy, alone, have against a grown man, a wizard as powerful as Tom Riddle?

No wonder all of them were, so twisted, Voldemort's followers. The more that Judge Black learned about how Voldemort fashioned his Death Eaters, the more he regretted the way he'd behaved as young man, when everything seemed to be crisp and black and white, and contained no devils in shades of grey.

"I mean that Riddle did to Miss Weasley what he did to me, and to Severus' mother, yes I do. I can only hope that in their cases it was seduction rather than rape; perhaps that was less painful." Malfoy finished.

"At least you have the consolation of knowing that you were unwilling." Ginny interjected, shuddering, involuntarily.

"You were too young to know what he was doing to you, Poppy. You were just a little girl." Lucius said, gently.

She looked desolate, and utterly disgusted with herself, and he wanted to hold her; but restrained himself.

"At the time, not knowing any better, I really didn't think it was all that disgusting. I wish I could say I didn't like it. I did, though, gods save me." She muttered, to herself.

"By the Mother, may She save you all! That vicious, disgusting bastard!" Sirius cried.

"I'll tear him limb from limb!" Remus Lupin seethed, snarling.

"But how do we know if it's true? That Voldemort really is, literally, the spawn of Hell?" Sirius asked.

He still wanted to believe something, anything other than that horrible truth.

"I'm sure there's a logical explanation. Nobody can really, literally be the spawn of Hell." Hermione ventured, bravely, in a very small voice.

All eyes were on Albus Dumbledore.

He sighed, regretfully

"No, my dear, I'm afraid there isn't a logical explanation this time. Well, I suppose it had to come out, sometime. I would have rather it hadn't until after the war, but, I would rather that many of the outcomes of this terrible war has wrought were different. Tom Riddle's father was not the Muggle his mother briefly married. Her family, though not aristocratic, was prominent in the circles of those were deeply involved in the Dark Art. In Tom's case from as far back as the Age of the Rings. To preserve their ties in blood and Black Magick to their Hellish masters, once in every seven generations they performed an obscene and forbidden ritual, involving the seventh daughter of the seventh son of the main branch of the family line and a demon. Tom is the direct result of such a union, and as Merope's branch of the Gaunt family was already thoroughly infused with demonic blood he is quite probably more demon than man. I can't be sure of the particulars of Tom's patronage, but considering the stature of his mother's family and their long history of practising the Black Arts, his father, may indeed be Lucifer, himself. There's really no way to know, for sure." Dumbledore replied.

Severus Snape sat down, heavily, in a chair.

"By the Mother, and the King, and all the Gods, Good Christ in Heaven! Me Mum was right! He did want to make her the Queen of Hell. Literally." He said.

"But had you planned for that, Snape? That Voldemort was of demonic origin?" Sirius asked.

"Of course I did! I always assumed it; it's just that knowing that my most twisted and paranoid fantasies are the actual truth is somewhat disquieting." Snape replied.

"Welcome to me life." Lupin quipped, bitterly.

"I do not want this knowledge to go any further than this room. Our fellow defenders have the privilege to see this war in black and white. The snake-faced Neo-Nazi Lord Voldemort and his legions of Death Eaters against the forces of the Good and True. Let's leave it at that. It will make it easier for all of us." Dumbledore suggested.

"I think Harry needs to know the truth." Ginny insisted.

"I won't keep it from him." Hermione agreed, defiantly

Dumbledore was about to protest when Snape spoke up.

"Harry already knows the truth. He knows more than any of you in this room. What I know, Potter knows. I've recently made sure of that." Snape said.

"Are you sure that was the best idea, Severus?" Dumbledore asked.

"With all due respect, Albus, how could Harry defeat his enemy if he didn't know everything."

"Everything?" Dumbledore asked.

"Everything."

"What everything? Why won't anyone tell me what's going on?" Hermione demanded.

"Because, Granger, that information is on a need-to-know basis. And you don't need to know." Snape replied.

"Oh, fuck me! I s'pose I'll read about it in the Quibbler, won't I?" Hermione snapped.

That, Hermione thought, was not a half-bad idea. She's go and ask Luna what was going on. Once you could get past all of her wild conspiracy nonsense, it often became clear that she knew exactly what was going on.

In an uncharacteristic show of disrespect to her superiors, Hermione left in a huff.

"Granger, come back here!" Snape insisted.

"Get stuffed, Snape!" Hermione replied.

The Headmaster sighed.

"What a terrible war this is." He mused.

Little did he know that it was about to get worse.


	19. The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

**Chapter 19: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men Do Often Go Astray**

Sometimes it seemed to Snape that no matter how carefully he laid his plans, Voldemort always did something to trip them up.

That was why he planned so intricately, trying to foresee even the contingencies he could not foresee, and plot ever action, and reaction down to the minutest detail.

The revelations in Dumbledore's office, and Riddle's involving Ginny and Hermione in his own plans were unfortunate, but after Snape carefully reviewed his tangled knot of carefully laid objectives, counter-objectives and contingencies he decided that the repercussions of Tom's latest irritating machinations would be, in essence, mere technicalities that Snape could easily surmount.

He certainly said nothing about it at the final briefing in the Great Hall, where all of the individually drilled battalions finally heard the plan altogether.

That is, the part of the plan that was necessary for them to perform their particular actions in the overall plot.

Sometimes Snape's plans were so intricate even he couldn't sort out what was going on.

Which was good. If the plan was so complex as to be absurd, then it was foolproof , or, at least Tom Riddle proof.

Most of his troops, however, not knowing of their Professor's complex network of maniacal doublethink thought that in these last days before the Final Battle, he was cracking under the pressure and going just the tiniest bit mad.

That was, of course, _before _the briefing.

"He looks just like Patton in the movies. Look at him." Harry tittered.

"Shut up, Harry!" Hermione admonished him.

"Is this where we find out why we got wands _and_ machine guns?" Neville asked.

Neville wasn't too crazy about the machine guns.

Snape set up his Thought Box, and went through the final briefing.

A map of Hogwarts and the surrounding area came up.

"Now, Voldemort is likely to send the brutes in first and have the wizards later. You student troops will stand here, behind the pits. I don't care if he sends nine foot tall werewolves, giants as big as houses, and shoggoths with rows of teeth existing in non-Euclidean angles after you, do not move. Do not touch your wands. The idea is to make his lot think that the only defenders of Hogwarts are a handful of brave students with wands, who are frozen with fear at the sight of the enemy forces. You must hold your ground, because the enemy has to advance to this point, here, in order for the battle plan to work. Now, when they get to approximately here, the tank crew will activate the hex mechanism. Then, after Operation Slytherin, which doesn't concern those assembled here, Professor Lupin and I will cast the necessary spells from inside the command tank, which will still be hidden in this central pit, here, and the heavy artillery will come up out of the pits here, and here and here, and make them into mincemeat. This will be extremely bloody and disgusting, so please make sure you all drink your Guts of Iron potions before the battle begins."

"Did he say 'command tank'?" Neville asked Harry.

"I think so. I hope I get to go in the tank. That would be fucking brilliant!" Harry enthused

"Great. Old Snape's finally lost his marbles." Ron asserted, glumly.

"Oh, I don't know, Ron. I think I'd rather have a tank than not have a tank, facing You-Know-Who." Neville agreed.

Ginny raised her hand.

"When do we get to use the machine guns, Professor?"

"Soon, Miss Weasley. Now, Mr. Potter and Miss Granger will be in the Command Tank with myself, Professor Lupin, and Lord Malfoy. Miss Weasley, due to your, ah, unique temperament, and your natural skill with firearms, I would like you to be the gunner."

"Do I get out of the tank at some point?"

"Yes. Now, after the initial assault, and Operation Slytherin, the dwarves will attack the enemy from the right flank, and the Elves from the left. They will already be secreted in the holding pits behind enemy lines in these three locations. At this point, all students should fix their wands to the bayonet mounts on their weapons and commence firing both spells and bullets at the enemy. Our trolls and giants will attack from the rear. Stop laughing, Mr. Malfoy, or I will make an unkind joke about you. Mr. Weasley, you will lead the right flank of the student forces as we have practised in our drills, and you will hold the left, Longbottom. Miss Lovegood, you will be in charge of the central division. The Knights of Albion and the Adult Wizard Forces will emerge from the holding pits here, here and here, and advance. At this time, and the student army will retreat to defensive positions around the school. The other faculty will also take defensive positions around the school. This is because we'd like to get as few of you killed as possible, and it is not negotiable. Now, the Command Tank will make a frontal drive directly through what is left of the centre of the main enemy force of wizards. At this point those of us in the command tank will take the potion that I have discussed with you. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it does not apply to you. After we have taken the potions we will exit the tank and engage the stragglers while Potter takes Lord Voldemort prisoner. Voldemort will then be transported back here in the Command Tank for further proceedings. Does anyone have any relevant questions?"

Ginny raised her hand again.

"Do we get house points for killing a certain number of the enemy?" she asked.

"No, Miss Weasley. With you in action, that would make the contest unfair for the other three houses you don't belong to."

Ron raised his hand.

"What are the Seven Guitar Wizards going to do?" he asked.

"Are you one of them, Weasley?"

"No."

"Then that's not your problem, is it? Any more questions? No. Alright, then, dismissed. Battle stations tomorrow morning just before dawn."

Smartly, and feeling quite pleased with himself, Snape gathered up his thought box, and left the Great Hall, to attend what he hoped would be his last meeting with Tom Riddle, in the Shrieking Shack.

Harry stopped him along the way.

"Ummm, Da, are you…feeling alright?" he asked.

"I'm not crazy, Harry."

"Then why do we have a tank? Not that I don't think it's brilliant, but, Muggle Weapons and a tank?"

"It's very simple, Harry. Some of Riddle's allies, especially amongst his werewolves are Muggles. Most Muggles think magic is all bullshit. Just like most wizards think that all Muggle weapons are bullshit. Now, if I have Muggle weapons and magical weapons, I have the ability to induce utter pants-shitting terror in all of Voldemort's forces. Also, its' much easier to stop a troll with heavy artillery than it is with spells. Not to mention there's nothing in our magical arsenal that deals death as crudely, messily or in as psychologically damaging a way as shrapnel and high-caliber bullets. Now, go get some rest. And don't worry. Albus and I know what we're doing."

"Yeah, I've heard that before." Harry snorted, derisively.

Harry wasn't at all sure that his father knew hat he was doing. When he talked about bullets, and tanks, and shrapnel, and so on, he got this sort of mad, faraway look in his eye, like he was already on the battlefield, in his tank, rolling over the gory remains of trolls and Death Eaters, charging towards victory.

Harry decided to follow the Old Man to his penultimate meeting with Tom Riddle, to make sure that wily old Voldie didn't pull a fast one on his heir while Snape was having delusions of glory.

***

Snape was, of course, fully aware that Harry had followed him as he made his way to the Shrieking Shack.

He was thinking about chasing him off, but, then again, it might be good to have another pair of eyes and ears when the wicked old screw was about.

Voldemort had brought Nagini, and Snape and the great snake both eyed one another with disgust.

Their feud was an old and long-standing one. Snape had always hated Voldemort's familiar, and mistrusted her, and the feeling was mutual. In his wasted youth and behind the Dark Lord's back, Snape used to threaten the snake in Parselmouth, telling her that he was going to have her skin for a pair of boots and a new suit.

She had never forgiven him for it.

Lord Voldemort rubbed his beard and looked over the parchments he had unrolled across the table.

"I must say, Severus, you are quite a genius. You've already taken care of most of my annoying pureblood lackeys, and the whole of the Wizarding World is in a state of near collapse. And who is there to defend it? Dumbledore's Army. Or I should say, Snape's Army, more loyal to you than to him. It's perfect. The taking of Hogwarts will be a _fait accompli_. And then who will the Wizarding World look to in order to restore order and peace from the chaos that Albus Dumbledore has wrought? Me, of course. And you." He mused.

"All in a pretty package, tied with a bow. When will you attack?"

"Tomorrow, at dawn. If your final preparations are in place."

Snape smiled.

"Oh, they are. I've been waiting for this day for almost twenty years." He said.

Voldemort did not glimpse the look that Harry had previously noted in Snape's eyes, but Nagini did. In that moment, she became sure that this Heir of her Master's meant him no good. The Heir was leading the Master into a trap, and, even if her own life was forfeit, she knew that her time has come at last to destroy the hated Snape.

The great snake uncoiled herself from around her master's chair, and then she began to shake her massive head, threateningly.

Tom Riddle barely had a second to order his familiar to cease before Snape and the snaked acted at the same time; she struck and drove her fangs into his neck at the same time as he wrapped his hands around her body.

Pain unlike any that he had ever known exploded in Snape's neck and flashed quickly through his body, carried like the crackle of an electric current down every nerve, in every muscle and bone and cell.

Very distantly, he heard voices calling his name, but he was bound in battle with Nagini, looking into Voldemort's familiar's cold, mocking eyes, willing himself not to lapse into unconsciousness to escape the excruciating torment.

He knew that the venom was spreading through his body incredibly quickly; he had to get the snake's fangs out of his neck before it administered a killing dose, eliminate the aggressor and then quickly drink the general antivenin in the pocket of his Alchemist's coat.

To that end, Snape ignored the pain and continued to squeezed the snake just under it's head.

With what he thought was his last ounce of strength, he thrust his arms forward and the jaws unclamped from his neck.

The fangs pulled away with a sucking sound and a splash of hot blood and sizzling venom.

Snape was on his feet, and the chair was overturned behind him.

He put one of his hands against his throat, feeling his own blood, hot and metallic, oozing out of his swelling flesh and dribbling through his fingers.

He squeezed the holes, trying to push the venom out, and continued to squeeze Nagini with the other hand, with all his might.

Suddenly, unconsciousness was distant, even the pain was distant as Snape focused completely on the great snake, crushing her until he could hear her fragile bones begin to crunch and snap.

He was still looking into her eyes.

Snape saw the light beginning to go out of them as the animal writhed its last in his grasp.

He managed, in a way that utterly horrified his dark master, to smile.

"I never liked you." He hissed, in parselmouth.

Nagini went limp, and Snape dropped her corpse from his hand.

It was only then that he swooned.

He grasped at the air, and caught hold of Voldemort's robes.

Tom's voice swirled around him, and so did the room, before everything went black.

"Severus! Can you speak?" Riddle asked, gently lowering his heir to the ground.

Snape found that he could not.

"Of course you can't speak! I have a special antivenin for Nagini. I'll apparate back to my estate to get it. Try not to lose consciouness, Severus. You won't wake up, again. And don't move a muscle. It will slow the speed of the venom through your body. Don't even blink. Don't worry, Severus, I will save you. "

Snape wanted to tell Voldemort that he had some general antivenins and blood-replenishing potions in his coat pockets, but he couldn't speak, and his coat was on the ground on the back of his overturned chair. He wasn't about to stop his own heart reaching for it.

He heard the door slamming closed and lay quietly on the cold floor.

_Try not to panic, Snape. You've made it this far. Only a few minutes more. Just one more day until victory. _

_Think of Harry. _

_Think of Lily._

_Think of Tom as dead in the dust as his precious Nagini._

_One down, and one to go._

***

Harry saw the door of the Shrieking Shack open and Voldemort, without his glamour, running out the door like a bat out of hell.

Voldemort running out the door without his glamour, all the infernal light of Hell blazing in his eyes? Something must have gone terribly wrong, Harry decided, and ran for the Shrieking Shack.

He was greeted by the horrible sight of his father, quite pale and still, lying on the cold floor in a spreading pool of blood, his hand still clutched to his throat, the lifeless corpse of Nagini at his side.

"Oh no! No, no, no, not you too, Da! Not you, too!" Harry cried.

He put his head to Snape's chest, and he could still hear his heart beating.

"Snakebites snakebites what do I know about snakebites I know every-fucking-thing about snakebites I'm as master in the Third Degree of Magick of the Arts ain't I, Da? Can't move you now so let's see what pocket I think it's the right pocket there's the general antivenin and you can't drink it, if you move that much the poison will go right to your heart. Needle, needle who's got the needle? Fifth pocket. Fifth pocket on the left. There!"

Harry took the cork out of the bottle of antivenin and, holding it in his mouth he filled the entire medi-wizard's syringe with the purplish-greenish liquid, then he put the cork back in the bottle.

"Shirt's in the way. No scissors. Have I got a knife…right here, I think."

He cut away Snape's shirt.

"Basic DADA says straddle the victim's body, keeping the knees firmly clasped around the torso, in case of seizure. Find the heart…make a mark with the needlepoint… then plunge the needle into the heart and depress the trigger on the syringe at the same time…making sure the entire needle completely penetrates the body…here goes nothing, Da!"

Harry lifted the needle over his head, prayed silently to every manifestation of God he'd ever even heard of , then plunged the needle into his father's chest, pushing the evil-coloured, and nasty-smelling substance into the Old Man's feebly beating heart.

The antivenin began to work almost immediately with Snape's heart pumping abnormally rapidly to push it through his body.

The Potion's Master's arms began to flop about and his eyes opened and shut and rolled reflexively in his head. His heels drummed on the floor and he started foaming at the mouth.

Harry had reach in and stop him swallowing his tongue.

He was about to dig into the Old Man's pockets for something to stop a seizure when Snape stopped jerking about and he came to his senses, blinking as he looked directly at Harry, taking shallow breaths.

"Why can't you breathe, Da?" Harry asked.

"Because you're sitting on me chest."

Harry moved away and Snape sat up, fell over and then Harry helped him sit up again.

"Stay still, Da. I'm still looking for the…clotting salve and bandages. Don't say anything , yet."

Harry put the magical salve over his father's wounds, then bandaged him as best he could.

"A little looser, Harry. I still can't breathe." Snape panted.

Harry adjusted the bandages.

"That's better. Hand me my coat."

Still leaning on Harry for support, Snape reached into the pocket of his coat for a blood-replenishing potion and drank it, then, drank another vial of the same.

"Well, I suppose we're even, now, Harry. Thank you."

"Not until I save your life another three or four times. Can you get up? If you can't. I'll carry you. We have to get the fuck out of here before he comes back and kills you."

"Riddle didn't sick Nagini on me. She finally saw through me, but he didn't. I have to wait for him. I need the specific antivenin for Nagini, or I'm as good as dead Where the fuck did Riddle go to get it, Timbuktu? I could very well be dead by now, the bastard. Get out of here, before he comes back."

Harry looked out the window.

"Shit! He's almost here."

"Well, fucking play dumb. Act like you have no idea who he is. He doesn't know you know about his glamour."

Tom Riddle burst through the door.

"Tom, I can explain this." Snape began.

"Don't over-exert yourself, Severus. Excellent work, Mr. Potter. It's good to see you've finally paid your poor, long-suffering father back for all the time and trouble he's put into saving your life from the schemes of that sanctimonious idiot, Dumbledore. Now, Severus I want you to drink this potion, Severus. You'll find that it will make you extremely sleepy. That is because you must be asleep for the antivenin to do its work. Mr. Potter and I will look after you, just let yourself fall asleep."

Snape had to hand it to the evil old bastard, he always had a trick or two up his sleeve.

He took the vial, uncapped it, put a drop of it from the cork onto his hand, and sniffed the potion inside.

"You still don't trust me. You don't trust anyone, Severus, that's' your problem. It's made you so paranoid, you would never even tell m you had a son. I almost killed the poor lad several times. I wish you had told me, I wouldn't have made so many attempts on the boy's life. I would have brought him directly to you after I rid you and him of his treacherous mother and that idiot, Potter. Will you please drink?"

"I'm not satisfied it's mixed, right. Harry, give me my coat back."

Snape licked his finger.

"It needs more manticore tooth. Of course I don't have manticore tooth." He muttered.

"Severus, it does not need any more manticore tooth! Do you know hwo many times that Nagini bit me while I was training her? That is the exact potion I dosed myself with on several different occasions!" Voldemort insisted.

Snape knew that he would die if he didn't drink the potion, and then he'd be no good to anybody.

He gulped it down.

"I still say it needs more manticore tooth. I'm sorry about your familiar, Tom."

"No you're not, Severus. You hated her, and the feeling was mutual. I will miss Nagini. I don't know what I'll do without her, but better her than you."

Snape fell asleep almost immediately, leaving Harry alone with his most hated enemy.

Harry quickly ran through the possibilities in his mind. He already knew that a Death Curse wouldn't kill Voldemort; he had to be destroyed using the Old Ways.

And Da might still need his help to recover.

In the end, Harry thought it best to do what the Old Man did, to swallow his hatred and anger and feign fealty.

"Is he asleep? Good. Finally. Now, we'll apparate to my estate and get your father cleaned up and his wounds dressed and put him to bed."

"Yes sir." Harry said.

"Yes, sir? Come now, Mr. Potter-_Snape_, don't feign fealty to me. I know how you must hate me; it's no good being obsequious."

"I'm of two minds about it, now, Mr. Riddle. My father's been telling me so much of the truth about things, lately. About how my mother betrayed him. About how Dumbledore could have saved my mother and my father-by-law, but he didn't because he wanted martyrs for his cause. About how this whole war and all these killings are all because Dumbledore has an outdated sense of 19th century Muggle morality and he'll stop at nothing to impose his will on the Wizarding World. That you would have been glad to live and let live if he hadn't started this war. And the Old Man told me how you've always been good to him, his mentor, like a father-in-spirit. I don't know what to think, anymore." Harry said.

They spoke as they carried Snape to the nearest public apparition point.

"Of course you don't. You've been mistreated, betrayed and lied to since before you were born. All your life you've been used as a pawn by a selfish, sanctimonious prig of a man acting in the defence of a world of cowards and idiots like himself. Cowards and idiots who would just as gladly have seen you overdose on the floor of a filthy loo in Knockturn Alley as they would throw you to the wolves to save themselves. It was Albus, after all, who let your mother and father-by-law die, took you from your father by blood and his family, who would have raised you with love and care, and put you in the home of a pack of Muggles just as selfish and uncaring and sanctimonious as he. And why? So that he could make you dependent on him, and use you to get to me. And as for me, he's forced me into the guise of a ridiculous comic opera villain, and manouvered me into a position where I nearly murdered my heir's only son, the grandson of the only woman I ever loved. All on the word of that preposterous whore, Sibyl Trelawney, who spent the better part of her teens and twenties drunk and high and with her legs spread and her mouth open, trying to get as many cocks in her as it was possible to have. But, I expect, he manipulated her, too, the wretched woman, into making her believe she had talents other than being a lush and a pill-popping come- sponge. If I were you, Mr. Potter, I would be very confused as well. Not to worry. After this little war is over, I myself will give you what it is that you've been looking for these many years from the devious Dumbledore, but that, for all his stale platitudes he has always kept from you. The truth."

It was a stunning thing, to hear a man like Tom Riddle speak so highly of something like the truth, and Harry found himself repeating the words back to him.

"The truth?"

"Certainly. Unlike Albus, I have no reason to lie to you, or anyone else. I use lies as a tool against my enemies, dupes, and inferiours. After all, lies are my stock in trade. I am the son of the Father of Lies; I have no secrets, nothing to hide. Unlike Albus, who must lie to craft his reputation, which is based in lies, I make no bones about who I am or from whence I came. An honest man never considers truth a luxury; and if whatever else I have been in my life, I have been an honest man."

Later, Harry sat by his father's beside, unwilling to leave him as he was equally unwilling to wander abroad in Voldemort's lair for fear of what he might find. He found himself thinking that the Dark Lord's words made a strange sort of sense.

He certainly wasn't the horror movie villain that he made himself out to be. He was urbane, well-dressed, educated, quiet, and understanding. Even his manor house in the rolling hills of the English Countryside spoke to the banality of his evil. It was kitted out the way the home of any wealthy aristocrat would have been, provided he was of mixed Muggle and Wizard heritage. It was a very nice place, tastefully outfitted in a blend of modern convenience, Edwardian style and Wizarding tradition.

Had Harry not learned, at length the truth about him, he could see how it would be possible to believe anything this man said.

Harry felt a little chill go through him, even though the hearth in the tastefully appointed and room where Snape lay sleeping was crackling merrily.

He had not wholly believed it before, that Lord Voldemort was of demonic origin. Now that he had met the man in the flesh, however, he was more terrified by him, andhad become a believer.

Truly, this man was the Devil's own, he was his father's son as sure as Harry was Snape's.

Harry was in the midst of these kind of revelations when he heard a familiar and angry voice in the stairwell.

"…Eileen, please!"

_Smack! _

"Don't you, 'Eileen, please', me, you fraudulent old son of a frog-faced minor demon! You should have put that thing down years ago! It was always a mean and evil creature, it used to bite you when I was a girl! If my Severus dies, I will make you sorry you were ever born, Tom! I know just how to send you back to Hell where you belong, and if you think that you can stop me, and mine, you've got another think coming!"

Eileen Snape burst in through the door.

Harry wanted to run up to her and hug her like he was a little kid, but he maintained his composure.

"Why is Sev still asleep?' she demanded.

"I…but…I…"

"Oh, shut up, Tom. You didn't use enough manticore's tooth, that's why. Harry, floo to the Hogwarts Infirmary with your father. They're waiting for him, there. I'll be along, presently."

"But he's still asleep."

"Well, then, I'm sure His Lordship will help you to the hearth." Eileen replied, her voice dripping with bitter sarcasm.

Harry was only too happy to get away from Voldemort's rather incongruous lair.

Eileen was soon to join him, but she had something to say to the Dark Lord.

She no longer feared him, but still hated him, but, nonetheless she harboured a small spark of the feeling she used to have for him, for the man she'd thought he was when she met him.

"Tom, why don't you just leave it out?" she said, softly.

For his part, what man existed in Tom Riddle was still as in love with Eileen Prince as he had been when she was a teenager, and the mere fact that she had spoken to him gently filled him with a joy that he didn't think could be eclipsed even by his victory over Albus Dumbledore.

"I will. Very soon. You'll see. It will be a far better world when it's mine, Eileen." He promised her.

"But no one wants you to win, Tom! Not as Lord Voldemort, and certainly not as yourself, if they knew your true nature, which is even worse. For one thing it's a mad plan, for you and for wizards and Muggles alike. What good has this crazy fookin' quest for power ever done you? Look what you've done to yourself, Tom, and to me, and my family. Just leave it out. Take the vows. Albus won't murder you. And you need a lifetime of service to atone for what you've done."

"I can't do that, Ellie. I am what I am. I'm my Father's Son."

"You've been using that as an excuse for years, Tom. You're your own man, and its' this kind of man you've decided to be, no matter what blood's in your veins. Now, it's going to take Severus a while to get better, before you and he put this scheme of yours into action. You've got some time to think about it. Turn yourself in, Tom. Before any more innocent people have to die, or have their lives ruined because I wouldn't marry you and Albus Dumbledore had philosophical differences and he wouldn't let you become the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts."

Voldemort wanted to tell Eileen that the war was over a bit more than that, but she had already turned her back on him to Floo to Hogwarts to attend to her son.

Then again, he thought, maybe it wasn't.

The very concept that he, Tom Riddle, possibly the son of a frog-faced minor demon was, in the full course of his plans, going to end human civilisation on the Planet Earth and possibly any civilisation in the entire galaxy because he was jilted by his teenage lover and his former Headmaster wouldn't give him a job at his old school filled Voldemort's demonic old soul with such mirth that he couldn't help but laugh.

Like the fiendish madman and agent of naked chaos that he truly was.

***

Snape was lucky that he had great strength and good reflexes.

Nagini's fangs had not completely penetrated his body to the hilt, as such, they had missed the tendons in his neck and his jugular. The antivenin Harry had injected him with kept him alive long enough for Voldemort's specific antivenin to begin working to clear his system of poison.

Upon his arrival, Madame Pomfrey got Snape into a bed and she and Eileen got some anti-inflammatory potions into him.

The venom would certainly have killed him had Harry not been there to give him the general antivenin; but the puncture wounds, though serious, would not have been fatal.

Madame Pomfrey cleaned and dressed the two wounds, after rubbing them with a nasty-smelling green salve that made the swelling go all the way down. Just to make sure, she gave him another injection of general antivenin, and one of blood-replenishing potion.

Hermione burst into the infirmary around that time, along with his foster mother, Minerva McGonagall.

"Snape! Is he going to live?" Hermione insisted.

"I hope so. I did the best I could."

"Sure he is. If you think our Sev looks bad, you should see the other cob." Eileen joked.

"Why won't he wake up? Is he in a coma?" Minerva asked.

"No. But he will be asleep for awhile, possibly another day or so. He has to be asleep for the antivenins to work. And, miraculously, Severus should be just fine. He has the constitution of an Ox. You should see what he did to that snake. After it bit him, he ripped it's fangs out of his neck and crushed it to death. With one hand. Amazing. I want to keep him here until the antivenins wear off and he wakes up, then he can leave the Infirmary, but he needs rest. About a week of it. Then he'll be as good as new. I know what you all have to do. It will have to wait, though. About a fortnight."

"Takes after his father." Eileen observed.

Dumbledore , looking as worried as Hermione, burst in through the door next.

"Severus? Where's my boy?"

When he heard that Snape was alive and well, tears spring to the old wizard's eyes.

"Oh, thank the Gods!" he cried.

"Wot, did you think 'e were dead? Takes a lot more than that to kill a Prince, let alone a Snape. Our boy is fine. And it's our Harry we owe his life to. If Harry hadn't been spying on the spymaster, and administered first-aid in the Shrieking Shack, Severus would have died right there on the floor." Eileen told the Headmaster.

"Once more, Harry, I find myself in your debt. I think it's time that I reward you with something you've been wanting all year. The truth. How long will it be before Severus awakens?" Dumbledore asked.

"Not until later on tomorrow." Madame Pomfrey answered.

"Then we have enough time. Tomorrow morning, Harry, as soon as you've had your breakfast, I want you to come to my office. There are some things you need to know, before this final battle begins."

***

Hermione didn't have any homework to do that night, but even if she had, for once, she would not have been doing it.

Even she couldn't think of homework at a time like this, sitting by Severus Snape's bed in the Infirmary, patiently waiting for the antivenins and potions and salves and so on to do their job.

Supposedly he was going to wake up and be as good as new, but he looked awfully still and quiet, lying there in the neat and narrow hospital bed in the tidy infirmary.

He slept so infrequently that she could go for weeks without seeing him asleep. She was the one who slept through the whole night. When she was in the dungeon with him, he was usually still awake, usually talking to her as she nodded off and he was the one who woke her up in the morning.

Occasionally, he woke her up in the morning even when she was in her Head Girl Room.

But when Snape did sleep, he was neither quiet nor still.

For one thing, he snored like a goat, all snorting and buzzing and great flaring nostrils and chest heaving. He was always rolling around, changing positions, twitching his legs, laughing and swearing and muttering in his dreams.

They could fool somebody else, telling them Snape was only sleeping, but not Hermione.

This was more like death than sleep.

She tried to concentrate on the book that she was working on reading, but it was no good.

Hermione had never thought for a moment that Snape might die.

He was Tom Riddle's heir. He had been Tom Riddle's heir since he was 14. Voldemort believed absolutely in his Snape's fealty, he was the Spymaster, the Man With the Plan. She might die and Harry might die and Ron and any number of people, even Dumbledore himself who had already died once.

But not Snape. He wouldn't die.

He just couldn't. Snape was too absolute to die. He was like God was supposed to be when she was a little girl, he was everywhere.

Men like Severus Snape didn't just die. Death Eaters died, and the innocent died, and the weak died and heroes were already dead.

But not Snape.

She was trying to read her book and not think about it, but Hermione was, unusually for her, unable to control her thoughts and her feelings.

It wasn't a simple matter of love. Or, at least not the kind of love in romance novels and greeting cards and pop songs. Hermione wasn't sure if Snape was the thief of her heart, or whatever sort of rubbish you called it, but he was her mentor, her teacher, her friend and her lover.

She hadn't ever really thought about how thoroughly Severus Snape had invaded her life. His face was around every corner and his mark on every door. Her father knew his father, even; if Snape died there would be nowhere she could go to escape from his memory.

He wasn't just a man, he was the man. Even when she was 12 or 13 she had never had any interest in boys. That whole phase of adolescence where a young girl has crushes of sqishy and effete pop idols that looked just like they did passed Hermione right by.

She'd had her innings with boys. Tried it out with other blokes. Okay, maybe she hadn't.

There was no Helmut, the Gerry from Durmstrang.

There never had to be.

She had always been attracted to men, real men. Some women said that men were beasts, hairy and gruff and unsentimental, with dirt under their fingernails, smelling of armpits and ball sweat. But that was what Hermione was looking for.

And there was no mistaking Snape for anything less than a man. He had rough manners and rough features, scars and tattoos and teeth like a pirate.

Who could she get to follow him? Who would ever measure up?

She tried to remember the book wherein a Queen refused to marry after her husband, a great King had died, saying that she would not bring a dog to where the deer had lain.

A Third Degree Sex Magus hung like a horse who was hard as nails, tough as leather, ugly as sin and mean as a hornet.

He was the biggest, meanest, nastiest two-tone son of a bitch that she had ever met, the big dog, the alpha wolf, the leader of the pack, and any other man, any lesser man, well, he would just have been a lesser man than Severus Snape.

A lesser friend, a lesser teacher, a lesser lover, a lesser everything.

Not to mention Severus was the only wizard she'd ever met that she could have a decent conversation with. With most people, their train of thought had long since derailed when hears was just building up steam. Not Severus. When he wasn't one step ahead of her, he was right along with her. So where was she going to find somebody as bright as Snape, somebody she could work with so well?

And who was going to be her teacher? She already knew more than most witches and wizards twice her age. Who was going to stay up all night with her working on a project or provide that last detail to her even the library couldn't? Who was she going to rail at in Scouse slang and have him understand it? Who was she going to watch Monty Python and eat crisps with in bed at two in the afternoon, or three in the morning?

Every friend she ever had, they wouldn't be as good a friend as Snape. No teacher would be as bright, and as for sex, well she was probably going to turn into the whore of humanity looking for satisfaction.

Satisfaction is all in your head, isn't it? The best friend, the best whatever, the best person.

Maybe she could just change her mind.

Change her mind about a pack of dogs?

I shall not suffer to bring a dog to where the deer has lain.

All her life, Hermione had always been able to deal with anything that came her way, no matter what, and in a cool, calm, calculated fashion.

But, if Severus died, she realised she wasn't going to be able to fake just like a woman, she was going to break like a little girl.

That wasn't possible.

That couldn't happen.

She had to be reasonable.

She tried to think of what he would say about it.

_How stupid can you be, Granger? I've only got the most dangerous job in the Wizarding World. How could you have prepared yourself for everyone's bleeding death, even you own, and not mine? What do you mean you're going to break like a little girl? Are you Lavender Brown, all of the sudden? How do you think I felt when Lily died? Good? Fine, Throw your fit. Have your grief. But you'll have to get over me, and in a hurry, too, manky old Scouser git that I am. That's the way I've taught you, haven't I? What are you, a witch and a Scouser or some whinging little git from Woolton who gets her knickers in a twist over everything? And quit staring at me, for fuck's sake. I am not dead. Read your book._

***

Harry was wondering what Hermione was thinking, as she sat on the other side of the bed and pretended to read her book, but he was fairly sure she wouldn't want to tell him, and that he already knew.

His whole life had changed since he found out Severus Snape was his father. For the first time in his life, he felt as though he really knew who he was and where he'd come from, and he didn't care that he was a madman's son and a madwoman's grandson and that he'd sprung from the gutter, from the dirtiest part of the muddy Mersey.

And he was tired. Tired of it all. Let the world burn, and the stars die and let them all save themselves. Just then, he didn't care about victory, or revenge. Two of his parents were already dead, and nothing could bring them back. If the price he had to pay, if the sacrifice the Wizarding World required to be saved was his father's life, Harry wasn't willing to pay it.

"Fuck'm. Fuck'm all. They can't 'ave 'im." Harry said.

"Wot?" Hermione asked, startled.

"You heard me. I said fuck'm. We need him more than they do. Let 'em all eat cake, let 'em die screaming, they can't 'ave me Da. They never liked him, they never respected him, and one way or the other they never will. They don't deserve him. Fuck'm." Harry pronounced.

Hermione only nodded.

"I will not suffer to bring a dog to where the deer has lain." She muttered.

"Well, I'll look after you Hermione. I mean it. I'm not Snape, but I'm your best mate, and I'm his son. You'll still be like part of the family. I'll bloody marry you, Hermione, I'll make you me wife, an' we can remember him, together." Harry blurted out.

He half-expected Hermione to throw her book at him, but she didn't.

"Thank you, Harry." She replied.

"I mean it."

"I know you do."

They both fell silent, again.

***

Ginny was uncharacteristically glad to hear that the battle was being postponed for a fortnight.

It was a merry game that she had been playing with herself for the past five years, but now, the game was up.

It had always been her little secret, since she was a little girl. That little spark of dark that lived inside her, that had always been there. That little spark of dark that extinguished all thoughts of Gilderoy Lockheart when Luke made his appearance at the bookshop.

That little spark of dark that no one could see.

Almost no one.

But Lord Voldemort, who was of Hell and from Hell, it was his business to see evil lurking in the souls of men.

And women.

And silly little girls, who found it more natural to give into the power and pleasure of evil than strive to be good.

A silly little girl who grew up to be a cruel and violent psychopath, with a taste for blood and war and casual brutality, a loveless, merciless beast of prey, nursing the Devil's seed inside her, giving birth, on moonless nights, to a thousand tiny monsters.

And when the war was over, would she love it any less? Could Quidditch satisfy her bloodlust and pacify her heart of darkness?

It may have been odd, and not what she expected, but she hadn't found her experiences with teenage Tom Riddle unpleasant or disgusting.

She had enjoyed it.

Perhaps that was because he had only made her more of what she already was.

She didn't want to see anyone, not even Harry, after the word came that Snape was going to live and that plans would be postponed two weeks hence, she quietly went home to the Burrow and shut herself up in her room.

Molly couldn't convince her to come out to eat; she put a tray in front of the door and later the door opened and the tray went in and then after that it came back out again.

She and Arthur were at their wits end when they received a visit from Remus Lupin.

He was convinced that Ginny would let him in, and that he could convince her to come out.

As it turned out, he was right about Ginny letting him into her room.

"I'll come back for the war. But then I'm going to go off somewhere. I might just take my animagus form and stay that way. I'm not fit to be around people, anymore, I never have been."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm a vicious murdering psychopath, and I've been the Devil's willing whore. I think that's enough."

"Yes, but if you were a psychopath, you wouldn't have the capacity to feel remorse, or shame, would you? As for your willingness to have an affair with Tom Riddle, I'd say it was just a case of you being young, and horny, and stupid, and your mother not realising you were the kind of girl who had to be told at eleven about avoiding a certain kind of man. You just thought he was a lad around your age, 15 or 16, your secret boyfriend. And what did you know about sex? You'd never done it before, how would you know that he was abnormal? If someone had told you the boy you had this crush on was Lord Voldemort, and also possibly the son of the Devil, I'm sure you wouldn't have been so willing. Don't be melodramatic. It's not like you."

"It isn't, is it? But I am ashamed. I've always been ashamed. I was never afraid to tell Luke, and Harry, well, Harry's got enough vices and sparks of darkness in him that I knew he could understand, but I never wanted people like in general to know. Especially not you, Remus. You must think I'm disgusting, now. Never want to touch me again."

Remus Lupin began to have the same feeling he always had when he was alone in a room with Ginny Weasley.

Worse, this room had a bed in it.

"I always want to touch you. That's my problem. I'm married, I have a child, I love my wife and she loves me, but…of course I don't think you're disgusting. I could never think you were disgusting." He confessed.

"Remus, Tonks wants to join the Order of the Satyr, which is sort of a jumped-up swingers club. I don't think she'd object. And she knows that werewolves are not monogamous by nature. Why do your torture yourself?"

"For the same reasons you do, Ginny. Shame. You can't imagine the things I've done and the same I feel for them. Many times I've tried to go off somewhere and be an animal and never seek human society again. Or even the society of other creatures like myself. But it didn't work. It won't work for you, either. Please, come back with me to Hogwarts. You don't have to be in the war, or do anything else if you don't want to. Just don't think you can shut yourself away."

"Remus, it's not easy for me to say shit like this, but I need you. I can't get past this shit, whatever it is, without you. And when I say that, I mean…I mean I need you as a man, yunno? Just as much as I need Harry. Or Luke. I'm sorry, but I'm not the kind of woman you can comfort by holding me hand." Ginny finally said.

Right then and there, Remus Lupin made a decision. He was a Centurion of the Kinghts of Albion, a powerful Wizard, a husband and a father, a man of great principles and honour.

If he loved two witches instead of one, it didn't decrease any of those things.

Actually, sex really didn't have much to do with any of it.

"I know what you mean, Ginny. I'm the same way, meself."

"Well, don't be so rough on yourself, Remus. It's your nature. Like me Mum says, your part is to be what you'll be, that's the way of things." Ginny replied.

Remus thought that maybe she was right.

***

While he was in his deep sleep, Severus Snape had a strange dream.

He was standing on the side of the M-1, on a cold, dark, foggy night, trying to thumb a ride. Cars and lorries and buses stuffed with jeering people passed him, but no one stopped.

No one but a shiny black 1955 Coupe De Ville.

When he opened the door he was assailed with the commingled smell of cigarette smoke, blood, sweat and cheap rotgut firewhiskey.

The driver was blasting _Led Zeppelin_ on his radio. He was pale, and had long, greasy hair, and an armful of bruises, tracks, and sores. He wore silver rings on every finger, and leather wristbands and a studded belt with a death's head buckle. There was a bottle of firewhiskey between his knees, and his black eyes were like those of a shark, empty, glassy, and mindlessly brutal.

"Well, old man? Are you going to get in the fucking jam jar?"

"Watch that old man shit, you fucking little junkie punk. I'll beat you like I own you."

"Just get in the car."

Severus and his younger self didn't speak much at first.

"So, you're going back to get our revenge, are you?"

"Our revenge almost killed us, today. Watch the road, you drunken fuck. I'm going back because I have to do what I have to do. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yeah. Sure."

Young Severus took a drink.

Old Severus swore, grabbed the firewhiskey bottle and smacked young Severus' head against the steering wheel, over and over, until he felt blood on his hands.

He threw the bottle out the window.

"No you don't, you selfish little prick! You never did a goddamn thing you had to do! All you ever cared about was money and power and revenge. Your kind of thinking got Lily and James killed, and Harry taken away from us. You don't understand shit!"

Young Severus smiled through the blood pouring down his face from the gash on his forehead.

"And what have you been thinkin' about, old man? Your son? Your woman? Or was it just money and power and revenge?"

Old Snape scowled.

"We've not changed much, have we?"

"We try."

"Well, suppose I'd better think it out again. There's Hogwarts. Leave me out, here."

The car pulled over.

"Severus?"

"What is it now, old man?"

"Park the car and come with me. You're in no shape to drive."

Young Severus was also in no shape to walk, so Old Severus picked him up and started on his way to Hogwarts.

"I ain't heavy, I'm your brother, right, Old Man?"

"Something like that."

***

Out of a terrible fog of dreams, nightmares, memories and visions, Severus Snape drifted slowly back into himself, and became fully conscious.

He knew that he wasn't on the floor of the Shrieking Shack anymore, and it didn't feel to him like the bed he was on was luxurious enough to be one in Tom's manor, but he didn't want to open his eyes let, just the same.

He stayed quite still and listened for the familiar sounds of Hogwarts at night.

The old beams creaking and groaning in the winter cold like an old man with arthritis. The odd hurried and illicit footstep in the hallway. Toilets flushing, a lonely giggle, the sound of house elves chattering in their pidgin Elvish as they worked. The inexorable approach and retreat of Argus Filch and Mrs. Norris, as he went about his rounds. The sounds of the owls from the owlery, going to and fro in the night air, looking for food or simply stretching their wings.

He lay there quietly until he heard it all, and when he realised he was home, he opened his eyes.

Poppy wasn't about; she was probably asleep, herself.

He felt his throat; there was a bandage there. Then he moved his fingers and wiggled his toes and bent his knees and elbows and raised his arms and legs.

Snape coughed and no blood came from his lungs.

He said something to himself and his words came out clearly.

No real harm done, and that bitch Nagini was dead; it had been a good day.

Without too much difficulty he sat up, and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

Hermione was sitting in a chair by his bed, she was asleep, with a book in her lap.

Harry was on the other side in another chair, asleep, with his glasses askew on his face.

Snape stood up, and looking down, he realised he was naked.

He looked under the bed and found his Levis on the floor, where they had been tossed, and he put them on.

He walked across the Infirmary to Poppy's office, and she didn't seem at all surprised to see that he was up and about.

"Can I go home, now?"

"Yes. But I want you to rest for the next few days. Actually rest, as if do't do much and spend most of your time in bed. And no war for you, for about a fortnight."

"Good. I need the time to change my plans."

Snape thought about waking Harry and Hermione, but he knew that they would be emotional upon seeing him, and he just wasn't up to it.

"They'll figure it out. Or Poppy will tell them." Snape muttered.

He snuck one of Harry's fags from the packet in Harry's pocket, used Harry's wand to light it, replaced both, and then headed for the dungeon.

***

As the Potions Master walked the familiar hallways, he felt a little light-headed, but he was terribly hungry and decided that might be the cause of it.

"Why is Master out of bed? Treacher thought Master would be asleep until tomorrow?"

"Treacher, where the hell did you come from?"

"The kitchen. Master should at least go to his bed. Treacher will get him something to eat. Master must be hungry."

"I am. Thanks, Treacher."

Snape's rooms looked alien to him, but he sloughed that off as a result of the trauma he had been through.

He sat down on the couch, and put the telly on.

There was some pain in his neck, so he went to the bathroom and downed one of his home-made narcotic free pain relieving potions.

Coming back to the sofa, he lit a cigarette and picked up the remote.

And ignored the fact that his hands were shaking.

***

Treacher did not just being food, he brought Harry and Hermione.

Harry was wondering why the house elf ducked, but then Snape threw a book at him.

"Goddamnit, Treacher, I asked you to bring me food, not half the school! This was one of the worst days of me life! I don't need company!" he bawled.

"Company? Who's fuckin' company? I'm not company, I'm your kid. Move over." Harry said, sitting down.

"That's right, Snape. I do so much work here, I practically live here. This day hasn't been fun for Harry and I, either."

Hermione sat down on the other side of him.

"Just don't get all soppy and sentimental on me. I can't take it." Snape warned.

"Gods, no!" Harry exclaimed.

"I can't, either." Hermione agreed.

"Look, for what it's worth, I'm sorry." Snape replied.

"Sorry for what? It wasn't your fault." Harry replied.

"Of course it was my fucking fault! Prancing about like some kind of Wizarding Patton, all bound up in me depraved visions of blood and revenge and victory! I was acting like a megalomanical fool! Nagini could sense I meant Tom no good, that's' why she attacked me! It's a fucking fluke I'm still alive. What a silly old prick, I nearly got meself killed and left the two of you alone in the world, because I found meself enthralled by revenge. And money. And power. Again. It wasn't anybody else's fault."

Harry wasn't sure what to say.

"Now maybe you're ready to listen to my idea." Hermione replied.

"What idea?" Harry asked.

"Granger thinks I should use subterfuge to get Voldemort to give himself up. Tell him."

"It's very simple. You just take all that big swinging dick war hero bullshit out of the equation. All the prophecy specifies is that Harry is the one who ends Voldemort's rein of terror. So, you just have to make him believe that you're on his side. Some plan between you and Snape to get him into Hogwarts on the sly, and off Dumbledore. To make it look good, a few of us in the DA can pretend to put up a fight, you two can pretend to kill us, and that ought to convince him, proper. Then you get him into Hogwarts, nice as you please, apply the requisite simple Demon-Restraining spells and potions, and bundle him out to the stadium to finish the job. This way, nobody gets killed but Voldemort, and we have some law, other than might makes right." Hermione explained.

"Ginny won't like that plan." Harry mused.

"Ginny's going to have to go cold turkey on killing things. There's no time like the present. And it doesn't require a fucking tank." Hermione added.

"What do you think, Da?"

"I've got two weeks. I'll think about it."

They just watched telly, and didn't say much else to each other for the rest of the night.

_So, whatever will Snape do? Should he go with his original scheme of Armageddon and annihilation, or will he decide that subtle subterfuge is the best way to ensnare his prey? Find out in the next exciting chapter...coming relatively soon!_


	20. Revenge

**Chapter 20: Revenge **

Albus Dumbledore had told Harry to report to his office first thing in the morning, so he was surprised when it was Snape who arrived, bright and early, around six.

"Shouldn't you be in bed, Severus?"

"I'm resting here, ain't I, then? Albus, tell me the truth, d'you think me plan is a little…farfetched?"

The Headmaster wanted to just chuckle, but once he laughed a little, he ended up laughing a lot.

"Severus, you have a magically modified Sherman tank buried in a twenty foot deep pit, surrounded by anti-aircraft guns. Yes, you may have gone just bit too far." Albus replied, his eyes twinkling merrily with the laugh he was trying to keep in.

Snape scowled.

"Why didn't you say anything to me? I just made a complete arsehole out of meself in front of everyone in the Wizarding World!"

"Oh, it's not as bad as all that, Severus. Besides, nobody could say anything to you. You were in one of your mad moods. Still, after I heard the briefing you gave I was going to try and talk some sense into you, but I see that, unfortunately, Nagini has done that for me. My dear boy, we do not have to kill every Death Eater on the Gods' Green Earth. All you have to do is get Tom Riddle away from his minions and over the threshold of Hogwarts. He'll be rendered powerless, and then the ceremony can begin."

Snape lit another fag, and cursed under his breath. He hated to be proved wrong, but if there was no way around it, well he supposed he could have some use for the tank.

And the heavy artillery.

Perhaps even the machine guns.

"I do have a backup plan. Well, actually, it was Granger's idea, but I've thought it out meself, and I've come up with something devious."

"I'm listening, Severus."

"Well, we could deploy all of our forces around the castle in defensive positions, and I suppose subterfuge may be used to draw Voldemort into our hands."

"Subterfuge?" Dumbledore asked.

Snape began to smile.

It really was more his style.

He was about to lay out the details of his plot when Harry came in.

"Erm, I suppose I'll go have a smoke."

"You can smoke here, Harry. You're just in time." Snpae inteerupted himself

"To hear the truth about the Ministry Mutiny?"

Snape swore.

"Fuck! If you're going to be in CAULDRON, someday, Potter, you're going to have to get a hell of a lot better at spying. Here's the short version. Albus' plan worked. Voldemort got cocky when he thought his rival was dead. He made a trip to the desert. His minions were unprotected and there was an operation. You were drunk, high, and on your ass, so you couldn't be made part of it. A significant amount of Death Eaters and their sympathisers were either killed or jailed. Tom Riddle was tried, convicted, and sentenced in absentia. We won, they lost, the Headmaster became Acting Minister of Magic. If you want to know more, try using some of the espionage techniques I've taught you, and don't get Granger and Miss Weasley to help you. Now, we have bigger fish to fry, lad. Go and get Miss Granger and Miss Weasley. I have another plan."

***

It wasn't often that his heir managed to surprise him, but Lord Voldemort was indeed surprised when not three days after Nagini's attack, Severus requested an audience via the fireplace Floo network.

"But Severus, you should still be in bed."

"Oh, fuck me, Tom, I'll sleep when I'm dead! While I was flat on me back, though, I did hatch meself an excellent plot."

"Is this one better than the last one?"

"You might have said something to me, Tom."

"Well, Severus, you were having such a wonderful time killing everything that moved, I wanted to let you have your fun."

"I made an asshole out of meself in front of the entire goddamn Wizarding World!"

"Well, considering a good portion of it won't be here very soon, I wouldn't be too concerned."

"Well, I am concerned. And I have spent seven years cultivating my agents, and I'm not about to put then, or my son, in harm's way just because of my own bloodlust. Now, if you can arrange dinner for five this evening, Tom, I have good news for you. Very good news."

Lord Voldemort was not surprised that Severus came to his senses, but he was quite shocked when his three guests turned out to be Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley.

"Tom, may I introduce my crack team of hand-picked, hand-trained, deep-cover double agents. They are at my service, meaning that, on this occasion, they are also at yours."

"Can I trust them, Severus?"

"Of course you can't."

"Good. Severus, you are a truly evil man." Voldemort chortled.

"Coming from you, Tom, I'll take that as a complement."

***

It was the most unpleasant dinner of Harry's life.

He didn't know what was worse, having to make nice with his mortal enemy, or having to watch said mortal enemy make eyes at his girlfriend.

Which was unsettling to Harry, as it made him realise the same things that turned him on about Ginny also were what appealed to Tom Riddle, opening potential cans of worms he did not even wish to think about.

Snape, on the other hand seemed to be in his element.

He was, quite obviously, enjoying himself, the devious, wicked old screw, pointing out vantage points with his wand on a map with one hand and sipping a tonic water and lime with the other.

"The man has balls of steel." Ginny observed to Hermione.

"I know." She replied.

Snape shot them a dirty look, and they became silent.

"It couldn't be simpler, Tom. A battle may rid you of your Army of Fools, but it's too risky. Not even I can control the outcome of a battle. This way, there's no chance of failure. While you divert your forces to certain death at the hands of my army right here, you'll try to gain entry to Hogwarts this way, past the Whomping Willow. Of course, the brave members of the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army will be waiting for you, and whoever you've brought with you that you want to make sure ends up underground. We'll make it a good show, and then, just when it looks like Harry has you, Granger and Weasley and I will turn our wands on the little band of defenders. It will be very tragic, as everyone but the four of us will be killed. And you will be taken prisoner. The battle going on concerning nobody important will end, and you can walk right into Hogwarts, nice as you please. You'll be sure to reach your objective, and all of your minions will be dead."

"All of them?"

"I have a tank, Tom. And heavy artillery. Just think of it as a very deadly red herring."

"Blood red." Ginny couldn't help but observe.

"A tank? And heavy artillery? Does he really have a tank, ladies? Mr. Potter-Snape?"

"He does." Hermione answered.

"Severus, you're a madman. I like it. When and where shall we play out our little scene?"

"Friday suits me."

"Shouldn't you be in bed for another week?"

"Honestly, Tom, I want to get this over with. I'm tired of fucking about." Snape confessed, truthfully.

***

The bloodbath began, sharp at eight, with all the players assembled for the coming drama.

Hermione watched the first volleys of the anti-tank guns rip into Voldemort's ranks, spraying little bits of trolls, everywhere.

She heard the screams of terror as Remus Lupin and the Knights of Albion led the charge of shapeshifters into Voldemort's ranks from the front as Lucius Malfoy's Operation Slytherin traitorswithin the Death Eaters' ranks attacked Voldemort's armies from the rear, followed by Hagrid leading his contingent of trolls and giants.

Right on schedule, the Command Tank emerged from its hiding pit, leading the drive of the Army of Magical Creatures into what remained of Voldemort's frightened, disintergrating ranks, belching forth shells, spells and .50 calibre machine gun fire.

It was a slaughter.

"Hermione, have you seen Ginny?" Harry suddenly asked.

"No. And I haven't seen Snape, either."

"They must be down there. In the tank." Ron observed.

"That no-good, stinking double-crossing son of a bitch! He promised me that tank was going to be unmanned!" Hermione exploded.

"I guess he just couldn't help himself." Harry chuckled

"Why don't you just say "Snape" and make it easier on yourself." Ron suggested.

Harry had to laugh.

Ron looked down over the hill.

"I hope Ginny has a good time killing things. She's going to have to go cold turkey after today." He said.

"She still has Quidditch." Hermione volunteered.

"She still has bar fights. Quidditch doesn't have enough blood in it." Harry observed, matter-of-factly.

"Ginny's not that bad."

"Are you kidding me, Hermione? If she had claws, she'd be the fucking Wolverine." Harry snorted.

"Who's that?" Ron asked.

"Never mind, Ron. It wasn't a complement." Hermione told him.

"The fuck it wasn't! Kill 'em all, Gin! Let the gods sort the fuckers out." Harry snarled.

He was still miffed that he didn't get to ride in the Command Tank.

***

"…take that you sons-of-bitches! Eat lead! A-hahahahahahahaha! Hahahahahaha!"

Lucius shot the Command Tank's gunner a lustful look.

Snape cut him off at the pass.

"Leve it out, Luke, for fuck's sake. We are in the middle of a war. Load potion torpedo seven."

"Loading."

"Fire! Miss Weasley, incoming at six o' clock."

"Got 'em, Professor Snape!"

Every time Giunny fired the huge gun, her helmet bobbed up and down on her head in an amusing fashion, but Snape was busy driving the tank and he wasn't about to laugh at a woman who was manning a .50 calibre machine gun.

Lord Malfoy opened the wand port and began blasting away at the enemy who were rushing the tank.

"That brings me to a grand total of 176, Poppy." He observed

"Giant troll with a huge rock dead ahead, Luke! Shoot it ! Shoot it!" Ginny yelled.

She strafed the troll, Snape took evasive action and Lord Malfoy loaded a shell into the anti-tank gun and fired.

The shell, a Muggle weapon, exploded the troll quite nicely into a million gooey greenish-purplish bits.

"147." He amended.

"Shit! You are not going to beat me, Malfoy!" Ginny exclaimed, and turned her machine gun on a contingent of werewolves and what she was fairly sure were something like orcs that had re-organised to try and rush the tank.

"Hahahahaha! 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154! A-hahahahaha! Die, die, die, Death Eater scum from hell! 155, 156, 157, 158….A-hahahahaha!"

"She's a good soldier, isn't she, Luke?" Snape observed.

"Very good, Sev." Malfoy agreed.

He returned to the wand port, to catch up.

Snape drove the tank implacably forward, over the parts of that and many other trolls, and the bodies of the dead and dying enemy, with his Great Army in its wake.

Before them, what was left of Voldemort's army wasn't so much retreating as fleeing in terror.

"Cease firing!" he ordered.

"Two hundred!" Lord Malfoy sang, triumphantly

"197, 198, 199."

"Cease fucking firing, Weasley! What are you going to do for an encore, join the bleeding Manson family?" Snape insisted.

"Two hundred! Tied you!"

After Ginny ceased firing, Severus Snape stopped the Command Tank, which was the signal for his Army to halt.

He climbed up the ladder, and opened the top of the tank.

In a frightening display of wandless magic, he cast a spell that created a lake of protective fire around his tank.

He took off his robes, climbed out of the tank and stood on top of it, displaying all of his magical tattoos and his satyr's horns, and stood tall and grim amid the flames, levitating a fireball between his hands.

"I heard he didn't wear underwear. Where did he get black y-fronts from?"

"He wants to intimidate them, not make them cry." Luke joked.

They both snickered down in the tank, but Snape did not hear them; he was too busy being frightening, cruel, and all-powerful.

"For those of you who do not recognise me, in my natural state, I am General Severus Snape, Third Degree Magus in all of the Five Disciplines, Member of the Order of the Phoenix and Grand Master of the Order of the Satyr. I would like to cordially welcome you all to Hell. I assure you I am the most ruthless yobbo son of a bitch you will ever have the misfortune to know, and you would rather deal with Satan himself than the likes of me. I could very easily kill all of you, personally, without even using my tank, or my army, but, since I probably taught some of you snivelling fucking worms, I will be generous, and accept your immediate and unconditional surrender. Anyone who wants to live can break their wands in half and throw them into this protective fire, lie facedown on the ground, put their hands over their head and wait quietly to be captured. Anyone who is not crawling on their belly like the filthy murdering Death Eater scum that they are within two minutes, dies. Anyone who resists being taken prisoner, dies. Anyone who is out of line on their way to the prisoner transport, dies. Anyone who attempts escape or revolt on the way to Azkaban, dies. If you make it there, you will have your due fucking process and your trial by jury, but until then, I am your judge, your jury, and your Lord High Excecutioner."

"Fuck you, you traitorous cunt!" someone shouted, and threw a rather large rock at Snape's head.

He ducked.

"That fire doesn't protect you from big rocks! Shall I come out and kill 'em all?" Ginny yelled.

"Be quiet, down there."

Snape smiled, and extended his hand to the would-be assassin.

"_Sectumsempra! Sectumsempra! Sectumsempra_!"

The wizard exploded in a volley of deep, slashing wounds, spraying a fine mist of blood and obliterated bodily organs through the air before he fell in a twitching, gurgling heap.

Snape pointed his finger at the dying wizard, again.

"Avada Kedavra! There, you see? I was merciful? Now, who else wants to die?"

Uniformly, every single living witch, wizard and other creature complied with Snape's edict.

Voldemort's army was no more.

General Snape turned to face his forces.

"I love the smell of wands burning in the morning! It smells like victory!" he enthused.

The defenders of Hogwarts cheered.

Lucius Malfoy and Ginny Weasley came out of the tank to soak up some glory, as Hagrid's giants came to march the prisoners off the field of battle.

Snape's moment of triumph was almost total.

Almost.

"Professor Snape? Professor Snape?"

The voice came from a young man who was marching along with only one arm behind his head, because the other had been obliterated.

He was leaning against the tank, unable to proceed.

Snape knew him, immediately.

Ozymandias Ravenscroft, a Gryffindor who had graduated in the same year as Fred and George Weasley would have.

He had been a fair Potions student, and had a spotless attendance and discipline record, and Snape had written his recommendation to attend the Merlyn School.

His heart, for, he still had one that he had conveniently forgotten, lurched sickeningly in his chest.

All of the sudden he was a silly old cunt of a tattooed yobbo villain in a pair of black y-fronts, stomping around on the top of a tank like a third-class Sgt. Major in a fourth-class Raj epic.

"Ozzy? You're a Death Eater?" Ginny asked.

"Not all Death Eaters are Slytherins, Miss Weasley. Pass me my robes. Drink this blood-replenishing potion, Mr. Ravenscroft?"

"What about the wounded, Professor? Are you going to show mercy and kill us, or just leave us here to die?" he asked.

"I am not Tom Riddle. The Elves dressed in white are field medics. They will be treating the wounded in those white tents before be transporting the wounded on both sides to the Hogwarts Infimary and to St. Mungos for treatment."

"With all due respect, sir, I won't make it that far."

Snape got down from his lofty perch and helped his former student onto the tank.

"Now here this! Any wounded soldiers who can't wait for the medics or walk to the white tents on their own for treatment will be picked up in the tank."

Ginny Weasley had a stricken look on her face as she let her fellow Gryffindor rest against her shoulder and gave him some water from her canteen.

"War is hell, Ginny. We'll see to the wounded, and then we'll go finish this dirty job, once and for all.

He climbed back down into the tank, and began slowly driving up and down the bloody battlefield.

***

Meanwhile, by the Whomping Willow, everything was proceeding as planned.

"Stupefy!" Ron cried at the same time that Neville shouted "Expelliarimus!"

Bellatrix Lestrange's wand fell from her hand and she stood motionless.

"You've got the old bitch now, Neville!" Ron cried.

Neville Longbottom collected on his parents' debt as he pronounced the Death Curse.

A jet of green fire came out of his wand and Voldemort watched as his last stalwart, Bellatrix Lestrange, fell dead.

"_EXPELLIARIMUS_!" Hermione Granger cried.

The Dark Lord's wand flew from his hand.

The blood-traitors and mudbloods approached him with their wands outstretched.

His servant, Severus was nowhere in sight.

Potter approached him first.

"Kill me if you dare, Harry Potter." Voldemort said, sneering.

Potter turned away from Voldemort and pointed his wand at Longbottom, who looked shocked.

"Harry wh...wh…what are you doing?"

"Sorry, Neville. It's nothing personal. Just business. AVADA KEDAVRA!"

The poor boy looked quite shocked as he dropped dead.

Then Harry stood in front of the Dark Lord.

"_EXPECTO PATRONUM_!"

Voldemort watched as the mighty stag that issued from Potter's wand protected him from the spells of his enemies.

Lucius Malfoy, Severus Snape and Ginny Weasley came charging up the hill from behind the defenders, wands drawn. Lord Voldemort could hear his servant Severus' voice issuing curses and hexes, and saw Granger coolly dispatching her classmates including Ronald Weasley, as Ginervra made short work of her mentor, his wife, even her own brothers.

He couldn't help but think that he had judged Ginervra correctly as a child, that Snape's son was a chip off the old block and that his heir had picked an excellent protégé in Hermione Granger.

They were a cold-blooded lot of murdering traitors, to be sure.

Severus walked through the dissipating haze of the Patronus.

"Wands down! Is everyone dead?" he asked.

Bellatrix Lestrange made her way to her feet.

"I'm not. Does this make me the second person to survive the Death Curse?"

"No. Longbottom pronounced it wrong. He never could do anything right."

"Well, at least it would have been quick, eh, Severus?"

"More than you deserve, Bella."

"_SECTUMSEMPRA_!"

Granger, Potter and Weasley all cast the same spell on Bellatrix Lestrange at the same time, and she sort of came apart at the seams in a very nasty, gory way.

Lord Voldemort stepped away from the flying grue.

"Don't you think that was a bit… unnecessary?" he asked, wiping a bit of blood and a shred or two of meat off of his robes.

"You said you were tired of her and you wanted her dead. You never said it had to be pretty. I never liked that bitch. I have yet to forgive her for trying to bite my cock off."

"I don't think she was trying to bite it off, Severus. Bella was always a little kinky."

"Yes, well, I do prefer a blow job with a little less teeth. It was like sticking my cock in a cheese grater. Fucking evil bitch. Miss Weasley! We do not collect heads. Give it to me. See? Look at those teeth, Tom. I'll bet you never put your cock in there. Gives me the willies. I don't want to think about it. Goodbye, and good riddance, you fucking cow!"

Snape tossed the head over the hill.

"Look what he done to my trophy! Tom, let me have it, please? I want to start a collection. Why don't we collect heads?" Ginny complained.

"Dead things are full of germs, my dear. And they begin to stink after a few days. I'll have my trolls find it, boil it for you, and make the skull into a mug. How's that sound?"

"Well…okay."

Voldemort put his hands out for Harry to bind them in an Elvish rope.

"Does that burn?" Harry asked him.

"Of course. But we have to make it look good, don't we?" Lord Voldemort replied.

As they walked towards the unprotected Hogwarts, where the fields were strewn with dead werewolves, trolls and Death Eaters and the defenders cheered, Voldemort congratulated his protégé.

"Well, Severus, it appears not only that my heir has an heir, but now your revenge against the mudblood who spurned you is complete."

"Revenge, Tom, is a dish best served cold." Snape said.

He began to laugh, and so did Harry.

Voldemort laughed with them.

***

Lord Voldemort had a smirk on his face as he was led over the threshold of Hogwarts into the Great Hall, but the smirk died when he met with all of the Dumbledore supporters he had just seen die, and the man himself.

"Tom, I'm afraid there's been a little change of plans." Dumbledore informed him.

And with his hands bound in the Elvish rope, Lord Voldemort was as powerless as a kitten.

It was all he could do just to keep up his glamour.

He looked at his heir with an expression of shock and disbelief.

Severus Snape was grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

"Checkmate, Tom." Severus said.

Inasmuch as it could, the face of Lord Voldemort looked pained.

"Et tu, Severus?" he asked.

Snape shrugged.

"Just doing what you taught me. Harry, the syringe."

Snape pushed up Voldemort's sleeve, and made ready to inject him with the Dragon's Fire.

"I don't want you to have to die without discovering what all the fuss is about, Tom." Snape said, pleasantly, and plunged the needle into his former master's veins.

Tom Riddle felt a terrible pain in his arm that was not as terrible as the pain in his heart, and as he fell into blackness he actually began to weep…

_Author's Note: A little chaser to the new movie for my fans! And I'll bet you thought I was never updating again. This won't be a long cliffhanger, expect Chapter 21 within a fortnight!_


	21. Retribution

**Chapter 21: Retribution**

…and the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor brushed a tear from his eye as he tidied up his desk before going to the great hall for his Jubilee Dinner celebrating fifty years at his post.

The door opened and his wife, Eileen Riddle, came in.

"Tom, why are you crying?"

"Nothing. Nothing, Eileen. I was just thinking of what might have become of me, if I hadn't listened to you that night."

He shuddered at the terrible premonition of tragedy, evil, and loss, remembering how Eileen had begged him to turn his back on his demonic heritage, for his own good, and for hers and that of their unborn child.

"What would have become of us if I hadn't listened?"

"You did. And that is what makes all the difference."

His son, Severus Riddle, Hogwarts' Potions Master was having a smoke outside the Great Hall with his grandson, Harry Riddle.

"Straighten your tie, lad." Severus was saying to his son.

"Don't scowl so, Severus. This is a happy day." Tom reminded him.

"I can't see what makes you so happy about spending a quarter of your life nursemaiding the likes of these yobboes, Da." Severus replied.

Professor Riddle got a standing ovation from the students at Hogwarts as he walked into the Great Hall with his family.

The sound was deafening as his old Headmaster Albus Dumbledore rose…

***

…and solemnly announced the procession that made its way across what was usually the Hogwarts Quiddich pitch, amid the jeers and catcalls and screams from the crowd.

The stands were filled to overflowing with the members of the victorious armies, and countless other witches, wizards and magical creatures who had opposed the Dark Lord.

Still bound in the Elvish rope, as Lord Voldemort returned to full consciousness, he saw that he was being pulled to the platform in a cart by two centaurs as Dumbledore called for quiet.

Voldemort could see three hooded figures in the ceremonial costumes for the ancient Rite of Demonic Execution standing by the unlit bonfire.

The Torchbearer, in his red and orange robes that actually appeared to be on fire, with the blue Elvish scripts written all over them, was Lucius Malfoy.

The Swordsman, dressed in a mithril helmet and mail. He wore the Prince coat of arms on his breastplatem which was engraved with Elvish script that gave off a bluish glow that blinded the Dark Lord.

He wore no helmet; it was Harry Potter.

And last, but not least, dressed in heavy robes of black cloth woven deep beneath the Earth by goblins that had never seen the light of day, from the skins of long-dead dragons, adorned with their spiny scales, his face made up like a mouldering Death's Head underneath the hood that was fashioned from the flayed blind head of Lord Voldemort's basilisk, was the British Wizarding World's fearsome Lord High Executioner.

Severus Snape opened the ancient book he held in his hand, bound in the reddish-green skin of a dead demon.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle, spawn of Hell, son of a Demon, thou has committed the most unforgivable of sins, the most unspeakable of crimes. For these and may offences uncounted, unnumbered and unknown, thou shalt pay the ultimate price. Thy undying Demon head shall be removed from thy body, using the ancient and sacred sword of Godric Gryffindor. Then thy body shall be cut in quarters, and a stake of the wood shed from ancient Entish trees driven into thy black heart. Then from thy body shalt thy bowels be ripped and thrown on a fire made from shed Entish wood. Then the pieces of thy body shall be thrown into the purifying flames. And finally thy head shall be consigned to the fire, and only in the scared flame shalt thy head and thy demonic evil die, Tom Marvolo Riddle, spawn of Hell, son of a Demon. All shall to burn down to the ash, from whence thou came." Snape intoned.

Voldemort was impressed.

So he was to be executed after the ancient manner of dealing death to demons?

He would have, of course, expected no less.

It seemed unreal to him, the entire affair, until the Executioner drew Voldemort's own wand from under his black sleeve.

"Behold, the wand of Tom Marvolo Riddle!" he said.

He held the wand aloft, to the cheering crowd, and then, broke it.

The roar of triumph was deafening.

Lucius Malfoy lit the bonfire and Snape flung the wand into it.

Voldemort was startled.

"Severus?"

Voldemort's eyes met the cold black eyes of Severus Snape and the equally pitiless green ones of his son, Harry Potter.

Both of them, and Malfoy, were still grinning at him.

In that second, he knew that as he had spared none and showed none mercy, then, he would not be spared, nor shown mercy.

Lord Voldemort squared his shoulders, and drew himself up to his full height.

He would not let his glamour slip, nor would he die a coward.

"Thou shalt place they head upon the block, and turn thine eyes to face thy fate." Snape told him.

The Dark Lord walked calmly to the block, lay down on his back, and placed his head in the appropriate position.

The Elvish rope burned him, making him feel as though his wrists had been laid open unto the bone.

Snape drew from the scabbard, across the block, the sword of Godric Gryffindor.

Voldemort smiled at Severus Snape, even in the face of his death.

"Genius, Severus, true genius. I taught you well, and I see you have tutored your son in turn. My death means nothing. With this act of treachery, you both remain Dark Wizards, and my pupils, still." He said, malevolently.

"You taught us nothing, Tom. We learned all we needed to know from my foster father, Albus Dumbledore. You see, the deception at the Whompimg Willow was my idea. But your downfall, the Elder Wand, the Ministry Mutiny? That was all Albus Dumbledore. We have both been his and not yours, all along." Snape told him.

Voldemort's face turned to a mask of pain and anger.

Snape smiled.

"I am going to enjoy this, Tom." He said.

He looked up at Harry.

"Harry James Potter, as the son of Lily Evans Potter and of James Potter who died at the hands of Tom Marvolo Riddle, dost thou hear the blood of thy parents crying out to thee from the Earth?"

"I do hear it, Lord High Executioner." Harry responded.

"And for what doth it cry, Harry James Potter?"

"The blood of mine cries for justice. For mine hand to strike first where theirs hath fallen, Lord High Executioner."

"Dost thou then invoke the Right of First Strike, Harry James Potter?"

"I do, Lord High Executioner."

Snape grasped he sword by its flat end, and extended the hilt to Harry.

"Then I name thee Swordsman. Strike the first blow, and let justice be done."

Harry lifted the sword of Godric Gryffindor.

The afternoon sun glinted prismatically off of the runes carved on the blade, and Harry felt their power chorusing through him.

He felt the blue glow of the sword enveloping his mithril armour, and waited until he was completely covered in the sheen of ancient magick.

All of the students, and witches and wizards who were in Hogwarts stadium, indeed, all the witches and wizards who watched all around the world held their breath.

Harry looked into the eyes of the Dark Lord.

"This is for my mother, Lily Potter. And for my father James Potter. And for my father, Severus Snape." He told him.

Harry raised the sword high over his head.

He screamed, a terrible, pitiless cry that rang throughout the hushed arena, an animal scream of pain and rage and retribution, and brought down the sword.

The blade sang through the air, glowing with an eerie blue light, and cleaved straight through not only Voldemort's neck, but the stone block beneath it, thwacking solidly into the wood below.

Hot black blood in thick, foul-smelling clots spattered Harry and the Executioner both.

A few drops made their way into the flames and onto the Torchbearer's robes.

Malfoy would never wash those robes, and they were destined to hang above his mantle at Malfoy Manor, mounted majestically.

Voldemort's screaming head rolled right into Snape's foot and he picked it up.

The head was still screaming as he drove it down onto a stake of Entish wood, and held it aloft, walking the platform and brandishing his trophy for all of the assembly to see.

"Witches and wizards! Ladies and gentlemen! Magical creatures of all shape, size and description! I give you Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort!" he cried, in his thick Scouse accent.

All over the world, and in Hogwarts stadium, the spectators erupted in cheers.

Snape held up his free hand, and they grew quiet again.

"Give me the sword, Swordsman."

As Voldemort's living, and usually screaming, head looked on, Snape methodically hewed his squirming body into pieces.

"Bring me the Stake of Fire, Torchbearer." Snape intoned.

Lucius Malfoy took a sharp piece of wood from the bonfire and pointed it, flaming side down into Voldemort's torso.

Snape used the flat end of the sword to drive the stake through Voldemort's heart.

Foul black blood, cold and stinking sprayed up like a geyser, drenching the Executioner, the Torchbearer, and the Boy Who Lived to be the Swordsman, and take the right of First Strike.

The head screamed all the louder.

"Music to my ears, Lucius." Snape commented.

Malfoy laughed.

"Stand back from his guts, Mr. Potter. You don't want those all over you." He told Harry.

They both stood back, but when Snape disembowelled Voldemort the ropy coils of his corrupted guts shot out everywhere.

"Well don't just stand there, you two. Grab a few bits. Time to put the meat on the grill." Snape joked.

"What part do we eat? His heart?" Harry asked, avidly.

"Of course not, Potter." Snape insisted, grabbing a leg and an armful of innards.

"That would be barbaric." Malfoy rejoined as he picked up a few bits.

"And this isn't?" Harry asked, grabbing the arms.

"No. It's tradition." Snape replied.

Malfoy and Snape started to laugh, and Harry laughed with them.

They took the pieces and threw them into the fire.

Then Snape walked back to where the screaming head sat impaled upon a pike.

The smell from the blood and the gore and the sickly sweet stench of burning flesh was beginning to get to Harry, and he covered his face and retched, barely able to keep from tossing his cookies in a most unceremonial manner.

"Typical. Even to the last the old bastard is making me sick."

Malfoy produced a vial from the pocket of his robe.

"Drink this. Don't look at me like that. Severus gave it to me. Guts of Iron. It will keep you from tossing your guts onto the pyre with Tom's." Malfoy said, wryly.

Harry covered his face with his robe again, and hurriedly drank the potion.

He felt better almost immediately.

"Come forward, Bearer of the Torch." Snape intoned.

Lucius Malfoy walked carefully across the increasingly gory and slippery platform.

"Place thine hand above mine, and we shall consign Tom Marvolo Riddle, to Hell from whence he came."

Together, the two men who, as boys, had been seduced and destroyed by the Dark Lord, bore his head to the fire.

They were about to throw it in when he spoke to them, in a weak and pleading voice.

"Severus, Lucius, the pain is excruciating. Show mercy. Curse my head with death before you throw it into the flames." It said.

Both men laughed.

"Mercy? Severus, did Tom Riddle show me mercy when I begged him not to rape me? Did he show mercy when I threw my bleeding, broken, violated body at his feet and begged him not to sell me again? Did he show me mercy when I begged him to leave my son alone? Did he?"

"Why, no, Lucius. Did Tom Riddle show me mercy when I begged him to spare Lily Evans' life? Did he show my mother mercy? Did he show me mercy, twisting me into his wretched deluded slave as s child, something I've spent my whole adult life trying to escape?"

"No. He didn't, Severus."

"Then why should we show him mercy, now?"

"We shouldn't."

Without further adieu, they tossed Voldemort's head into the fire.

The three men, grim, and thin lipped, covered in ash and soot and gore and blood, listened to the screams of the burning head.

Tears of joy ran down their faces, and they all embraced.

In the stands, Lavender Brown, sitting next to Hermione Granger, shuddered.

"What a terrible sound. Don't you think it's a terrible sound?' she said

Hermione gave her a look of disgust.

"No, you idiot. That's the sound of freedom." Hermione told her.

"The sound of victory." Ginny Weasley added.

"Most beautiful sound I ever heard." Ron agreed.

He cupped his hand over his mouth.

"Keep screaming! It's music to our ears, you son-of-a-bitch!" Ron shouted.

Ginny stood up and cupped her hands over her mouth.

"Eat shit and die, motherfucker!" she yelled, savage as ever.

As Ginny's profane shout faded into the air, so did the screams of the head.

Lord Voldemort was gone from the Wizarding World, and his evil with him.

The day was won.


	22. Redemption

**Chapter 22: Redemption**

As night fell, most of the students had gone from the stadium, and even Lucius Malfoy had taken his leave.

Alone and under the rising moon, Severus Snape and Harry Potter remained on the platform.

So did Hermione Granger, but from quite a distance away.

Hermione was just watching as Harry swept the ash of the bonfire into a bag, and Snape, who had picked a few bits of bone from the ash, was explaining to Harry the potions and charms of protection that the remains might be used for.

Albus Dumbledore walked up on the platform.

He had a canvas sack in his hands, about which Hermione was very curious.

"Look at them, Headmaster. I can't go near them. Or it. The smell alone is almost killing me." She said.

Their robes, their clothes, even their hair was stiff with blood, ash and gore.

The platform and the two wizards stunk of death and rot. It didn't seem to bother them at all, though, and that was what bothered Hermione.

"Hermione, I chose Severus, and Lucius and Harry for this disgusting task, because I knew they all had enough hate in their hearts to do what needed to be done. But Harry and Severus bear Voldemort a greater hate than Lucius did, a greater hate than his death could fully expunge. They have hated Tom Riddle with a single-minded intensity for most of their lives. He took everything from them, including each other. That hatred, was, sometimes, the only thing that kept them alive. They don't know what to do with that hate, now that he is gone." Dumbledore told her.

"But what can we do about it?"

"You and I, and all of the people who love these two unfortunate men, father and son, can help them to let go of their hatred. We must encourage them fill the hole in their hearts and souls it has left with finer things. Let's start right now." Dumbledore said.

He took Hermione's hand, and they walked over to the two men who looked for all the world like a couple of capering ghouls.

"Don't the two of you think that's a bit ghoulish? Why don't you hand me that bag, Harry? And Severus, give me those fragments of bone." Dumbledore requested.

The two did not move.

"You had your day of reckoning and Lord Voldemort had the death he deserved. Severus, you know very well that murderer's ashes and bones as ingredients in potions and charms is noting but superstition. It's over. Let it go."

Snape regretfully gave the headmaster the tiny fragments of bone he had clutched in his hands.

"Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

Harry's heart was still filled with hate and exhilaration.

Mad thoughts had been rushing through his mind.

He had wanted to dip bread in Voldemort's slimy blackish blood and eat it, to make necklaces from his bones, to pick his toasted heart out of the fire and devour it.

"Harry, let it go." Dumbledore urged him again.

Harry handed the sack of ashes over to the headmaster.

When he let them go, he let the exhilaration of his hate go with him, and he felt drained, and sickened from the smell of death.

"Da?" he asked his father.

"I don't know, Harry." Snape replied.

"I thought you two might need some help. Hermione, let's leave the platform. Now, stand behind me, please."

Dumbledore produced the sword of Godric Gryfiindor from his robes, and waved it three times in an arc around his head. The same blue light that had enveloped the sword before shined out of it , and enveloped Harry, Snape and the platform.

Suddenly, their robes and their bodies were cleaned and purified in the soft blue glow.

A mist swirled around them, and out of the mist, two familiar forms appeared.

James and Lily Potter.

"What are the two of you now? Ghouls? Believe me, you boys stunk to high heaven in the most literal sense." Lily ventured.

"Lily!' Snape cried and he reached out to her.

Just passing his hand through the spectre of hers made his heart feel lighter than it had for decades.

"You're still in love with her, eh, bro-by-law?"

"I still hate it when you call me that. And yes. Why do you think I married her? Death doesn't stop love." Snape replied.

"Of course it doesn't. You're not angry with your Dad and I, are you Harry?" Lily asked her son.

"We would have raised you like any other wizard in a two Dad family, Harry. I've always loved you as my son. I never felt for a minute like you weren't my own flesh and blood." James told him.

"I'm old enough to understand now. I'm not angry." Harry said.

Tears were coming to his eyes.

"We're free to move on now that Voldemort is dead. And you both should be free as well. I mean there you were, literally grubbing around in his ashes. Albus is right. Severus, you have to let it go. And you too, Harry. This is the last time we'll come to see you, Harry. And you too, Sev. But I'll always be with both of you. You may not see me or hear me, but if you ever feel that I'm there with you, it's because I am." Lily promised.

"And someday we'll all be together. Just like we wanted." James added.

"I love you, Lily, I still love you. I'll always love you. But-" Snape began.

"That's what we've come to tell you. Harry, I want you to take care of Sev for me. And Sev, I want you to take care of Harry. And it's time for you to move on with your life, Sev. Don't feel guilty on my account. But watch out for Big John Granger. You always did have a nose for trouble." Lily interrupted

"Just feel guilty because she's young enough to be your daughter. Snape, you old dog, you. They can't get enough of your manky Scouser arse." James teased him.

"Was that grudging respect from you, James Potter?' Snape asked.

"Yes it was. They all love you, and the gods only know why, you ugly old bastard." James joked.

"All cats are grey in the dark, I suppose." Snape said.

"Oh I like that! So now I'm just a grey cat!" Lily commented.

They all laughed.

It was nice for Harry, to see his parents laughing together, the way they should be.

James looked down over his glasses at Harry.

"One more thing, Harry. If I could be there with you, right now, alive and well, would you go about calling me Potter?"

"No, Dad! Of course not!" Harry said.

"Then quit calling Severus "Snape" He's your father, after all. There's no more reason for secrecy. Lily and I don't mind if you tell the whole world the truth. We're not ashamed." James told them.

"I'll do what's right, then." Harry agreed.

The ghostly forms began to float away.

"I'll always love you, Harry. Good luck, Bro-in-Law. I'll see you in about a hundred and seventy years. And thank you." James said.

"And I will always love you both! I hope you and Hermione are happy together, Sev. You and Harry be good to each other. Mind your father, Harry. And you stay on the wagon! I don't want to see you anytime soon! Thank you for setting me free."

Their shapes became less and less defined.

"Take good care of her for me, James! I love you, Lily!"

"Goodbye Mum! Goodbye Dad! I love you both!" Harry shouted, through his tears.

The shapes disappeared in a great flash of white light.

"Don't say goodbye! We'll be with you. Always!" Lily's voice rang out.

Then they were both gone.

The blue glow became blindingly bright, enveloped Harry and Severus and lifted them above the platform and the ashes, which vanished into its brilliance.

Then, the light faded, and Harry and Professor Snape were standing in the middle of the stadium.

All the evidence of the execution, even the lingering smell of blood and rot in the air were gone.

Hermione and Dumbledore were still there.

But as the last halo of the healing blue light dissipated, they realised they were not alone.

There was a man standing in snow in the place where Lord Voldemort had been executed, naked and shivering in the cold, a man who looked both sad and terrified.

Harry could not believe his eyes.

"Come forward, Tom. We can't all stand out here all night." Albus Dumbledore said, gently.

"I don't fucking believe it. Do you, Da? Da?"

But Snape had scarcely noticed that Harry had spoken.

He had the strangest look on his face, watching the man come out of the blue cloud.

Snape's lips were moving, but nothing was coming out of them.

"No, I think I'll stay here, Albus. It's a cold night. By the morning, I'll have frozen to death, and that will be the end of it." Tom Riddle said.

"What the hell is fuckin' going on?" Harry demanded.

"There's only one way to kill a demon, and we did that here, tonight. But, when a man is part demon, and there's enough of him left that is still a man, the man doesn't die." Dumbledore explained.

"I didn't think there was any of a man in him at all." Snape muttered, his voice sounding small and odd and distant.

"I'm as surprised as you are that there was man enough left in me to live, Severus. But I don't want to. Not after what I saw in the Doom Trance. I've eaten of the Forbidden Fruit. I know that I am naked, and I am ashamed. I can't believe the things I've done, the…the horrors I have wrought. Please, Albus, let me die. Let it end."

"Tom, if the man in you has been spared, why should I thoughtlessly send him to his death? May I remind you that you have living followers, at lest two hundred men and women, perhaps more. They are young and old, some little more than children, who would have followed you to the grave, and have learned that you betrayed them. Some are languishing in Azkaban right now, their lives wasted, awaiting life imprisonment or death. Some of them are lying wounded, mutilated or at the point of death, in tents on the battlefield, or at the Hogwarts Infirmary, or at St. Mungo's. They are in Hell, though they still live, because they have already lost all hope of redemption. You led them to that fate, Tom. But you can lead them out of it. You can give them life, and hope, and a chance to redeem themselves. They have followed you, tirelessly, all their lives. They will follow you, again."

"How?"

"You can take the Unbreakable Vows of Service, here and now, and become the Druid of your own abbey. I have the robes right here, in this bag. I took the liberty of having them made for you, hoping this would be the ultimate outcome of your execution. There is an old abbey overlooking Hogsmeade that has long been deserted that I'm sure would do the job, nicely. The Ministry will offer the same choice to your followers facing death or life imprisonment, and as you led them to try and destroy the Wizarding World, you and they can help to rebuild it."

It sounded to Harry like Dumbledore had it all planned.

But no one in the Wizarding World had taken the Unbreakable Vows of service for years.

Well, not many people.

"Hermione? What vows are those?" Harry whispered to his friend.

"Harry, I told you to pay attention in History class! Under the Unbreakable Vows, a witch or wizard promises that they will devote their lives to the services of the greater good of the Wizarding World. Be quiet and listen. You might learn something."

Meanwhile, Tom Riddle considered Albus Dumbldore's offer.

"Do I have a choice?"

"Humane execution. I myself will pronounce the Death Curse, and you'll be given a proper burial, beside the bones of your family. I won't leave you here to freeze to death, though."

Tom Riddle thought of the peace that death would bring him.

But then, he also thought upon the enormity of his deeds, and in the light of what he had learned during his first and last Doom Trip, and the lessons of the Entish wood and Elvish flames.

He looked at Severus, poor Severus, and the stricken look on his face.

He saw his Heir's whole life flash before his eyes, right down to the day he had to cut the poor boy down from the rafters of his dungeon, after a despairing Snape hung himself following the death of his wife and brother by law, and the loss of his only son.

He thought of Eileen, young and frightened and pregnant, then young and a wife and a mother and a junkie, and of her husband and of young Severus, the parents each other's abusers and Severus their victim.

And these were just the shattered lives of the people he knew.

What about the countless thousands his machinations had affected? Indeed, what about his followers, most of them young people, some who were little more than children, awaiting death in the bowels of Azkaban, or in hospital beds, beyond all hope, like damned souls in purgatory denied the comfort of heaven or even the certainty of Hell?

He was naked, and he was ashamed.

Death would ameliorate neither; his soul would remain so for all eternity, and so would those of his followers.

"I'll take the Vows."

"Good. Finally, Tom, you're doing the right thing. In a situation such as this, the Vows must be administered by the Executioner. As the Druid, Tom, you will administer the Vows to those who choose to believe in you and follow you, once more. Severus, here is the book."

Snape hardly knew what he was doing as he opened the book and read the words.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle, do you vow to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and those in prison and bury the dead, and perform any and all works of charity, mercy, and service?"

"Yes, on my life, and my soul, I do vow."

"Do you vow that you will never seek, with malice in your heart, to harm any living person, to lie, cheat, or steal, to engage in acts of evil or wickedness including black magick and any of the ways of the Left-Hand path?"

"Yes, on my life, and my soul, I do vow."

"Do you realise that when you take these vows, you may not leave the order, or you will die?"

"I do understand."

"Do you understand that you may not violate these vows, even to strike he who strikes you, robs you, beats you, or murders you, or you will die?"

"I do understand."

"Do you understand you will be permitted only one wife or husband, and then only someone within the order, or you will die?"

"I do understand."

"Do you understand you must refrain from having any sexual affairs with anyone outside the order, and any smoking, drinking or drugs, or you will die?"

"I do understand."

"Do you understand you must wear your Service robes at all times, that you must live with your order, or in an abbey, and when you travel, it must be with order members, and only for the purposes of your works, or you will die?"

"I do understand."

"Do you understand you will be issued a new wand, a Wand of Service, which will only cast certain spells, and that if you attempt to cast any other spell, you will die?"

"I do understand."

"Do you understand your death will be instantaneous, that it will come without fail, without mercy, that there will be no judge or jury, and that Balor himself will be your executioner?"

"I do understand."

"Then what name do you take, Druid, that all may know you by it?" Severus finished.

"My own, at last. Thomas." Tom Riddle declared.

"Then, Druid Thomas, you are bound to Service by these vows, and should you enedeavour to break them, you will burn alive in the eye of Balor, and your bones shall turn to dust."

Snape closed the book, and handed it back to Dumbledore.

"Bow your head, Druid Thomas." Dumbledore told him.

Tom Riddle bowed his head, and Albus Dumbledore put a circular medallion around his neck, which depicted the Tree of Life with a pentacle caved into it, and the Wizard's Runes' in Elvish script engraved in slivery blue all around the circular rim of the pendant.

"Raise your arms." Dumbledore further instructed.

He put the hooded dark purple cassock, over the Druid's head, and then tied it around his waist with the belt made of Elvish rope.

Dumbledore then placed a pair of boots, made of the same purple Elvish material on the ground, knelt down, and put them on the Druid's feet.

"Lord Voldemort is dead. Long live Druid Thomas." He said.

"Thank you, for giving me this chance, Albus. Severus, I will spend the next century endeavouring to be worthy of your forgiveness, and Eileen's, and the whole Wizarding World's." Druid Thomas said.

All Severus Snape could think of were Albus' words.

"Let it go."

"Lord Voldemort, the demon I sought revenge against, is dead. I would never have forgiven him. On the other hand, Tom Riddle was my sponsor in the Five Disciplines from the time I was a teenager. He was as much my teacher as Albus Dumbledore, a father-in spirit if not by blood or magical bond. He even saved my life. He's still alive, and as I've no grudge against him, I don't need to forgive him." Snape replied.

He was surprised when the dapper old wizard in the Druid's robes, embraced him, surprised that Tom was crying, more surprised that he was weeping, too.

"My Severus, my heir! It's all yours, boy. Yours and Harry's. Do some good with it."

"But don't you need something, Tom? For your ministry?"

"If you feel that way, Sev, you can make a donation."

Harry and Hermione were silent; they had the feeling they had just witnessed something momentous even though they didn't quite understand what it was as Snape abruptly broke away.

"One-fourth seems fair. Well, then, Tom, I'll, ah, I'll come to see you in the abbey. Maybe you lot can do something with WAND."

"I think that would be a good place to start, Severus. We can do this good work together. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go to my followers. Immediately. I have to try and save the dying, comfort the wounded, and convert the living. I've got a lot of work to do. Mr, Potter-Snape, Miss Granger, would you do me a favour?"

Hermione's mouth wouldn't work, and Harry just nodded.

"Speak up, lad, for fuck's sake." Snape ordered him, elbowing him in the ribs

"Ummm, sure?" Harry fairly squeaked.

"Advise Miss Weasley to come to the abbey. I don't expect to be forgiven by her; I want to help her to forgive herself."

Then, the Druid disapparated.

No one said anything for a long time.

Then Snape turned to his son, and his father-by-law and Hermione, his student, his apprentice, the woman he was going to try to allow himself to, after a fashion, love.

"I can't believe I'm finally free. I'm freezing, and I'm starving, and I'm out of fags and I want to get out of these morbid robes, but I scarcely care, because I'm free. I'm free, and even Tom's free." He said

"Well, it is getting cold out. Let's go back inside. Everyone is waiting in the Great Hall for the guests of Honour." Dumbledore suggested.

"Waiting?"

"Yes. We've held up the banquet long enough. You boys have time to compose yourself and change your clothes, but then the whole Wizarding world is waiting." He told them.

As they walked back to the castle, Harry handed Snape the cigarette he had hidden in the belt around his chain mail tunic.

Snape used his wand to light it.

"Not a word from either of you." He warned them.

"Of course not." Hermione said.

Harry nodded.

He was getting good at nodding.


	23. Gimme Some Truth

**Chapter 23: Gimme Some Truth**

Harry was sort of used to people cheering for him, but Professor Snape turned a whiter shade of pale, and looked like he wanted to run away as soon as he entered the Great Hall.

"Shit. I'll be in the dungeon, Harry. Have Treacher bring the food down to me." He said, and would have immediately apparated to his hidey hole, had Dumbledore not firmly led him to the table where the rest of the members of the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army sat.

Lucius Malfoy was sitting alone at the far end of the table, looking uncomfortable.

Snape wsat beside him.

They exchanged dirty looks with Sirius Black and Remus Lupin.

"Are you two giving us the stink-eye, then?" Remus inquired.

"It's not you, Remus. I'm just not used to this sort of bollocks. Goddamn Albus for dragging me in here; I've had a fuckin' hell of a night." Snape grumbled.

"Us too, Snape." Sirius said.

Ginny walked by en-route to go sit at the end of the table with the student members.

She waved enthusiastically at Remus and Lucius.

"Oi, Luke! Oi, Moony! Still alive an' well? Not after I get done wif yer!" she said, cheerily.

Lord Malfoy coughed, and Professor Lupin put his head in his hands.

"Great Mother!" he exclaimed, and began examining his pockets for his Calming Potion.

"It's alright, Remus. Don't get all wobbly on me, now." Tonks told him.

"That's just Ginny's way. She doesn't mean any wrong by it." Harry explained.

"She doesn't know the meaning of the word discretion." Hermione added.

She had not so much as looked at Snape since they all entered the Great Hall.

That's when Ron, Neville and Ginny started waving at them.

"Harry! Hermione! I saved you seats!" Ron said.

Harry and Hermione sat with their friends, gald to get out of what was beginning to look like an awkward situation.

"There's no burnouts like 70's burnouts." Harry observed.

"That's the truth." Hermione replied.

Back at the adult end of the table, it was all go.

"I can't find it! I can't find it!" Lupin was exclaiming.

"Let me check me pockets."

Snape began to rummage through the pockets of his Master Magus' coat, with a great clanking of bottles.

"Here, Moony. Have a drop or two of mine." Malfoy offered.

"Thanks, Luke, I'm sure."

Lupin took a gulp of whatever Malfoy offered him, and handed it back.

"Luke, you don't take psychiatric potions. What the fuck was that?' Snape whispered.

"Vitamins. But at least he's not hyperventilating, anymore. Loony Moony had better stop sitting on himself, and engage his wife and our Ginevra to do it for him, or he's going to go around the twist." Malfoy replied.

"Are you alright now, Remus?" Tonks asked.

"Yes. I think so."

"Fine! Maybe we can fuckin' eat summat, sometime t'night! Where the fuck did you lot go after the execution? I'm starving!" Tonks insisted.

"I was looking for bits of bone in the ashes. To make charms. Potter and Granger were helping me. For, ah, extra credit." Snape calmly replied.

Sirius shook his head.

"Snape, you remain one sick fuck." He chuckled

"Did you get anything?" Lupin asked, sounding interested.

"No. Dumbledore made us leave it out."

"Oh. Well it might have come of something."

He sounded disappointed.

Snape laughed, abruptly, and it was not a normal laugh.

Hermione and Harry looked down the table at him.

"Oh it came of something, alright. It fucking well did."

He was just beginning to relax when the doors of the Great Hall opened to admit his entire family, including his Uncle Angus.

The unruly Snape-Prince clan made their way to a special table that Albus had reserved for them.

"There he is! Me son, the hero! Hullo, Sev! That's right you lot, there's you hero, you great load of fuckin' toffee-nosed gits!" Tobias Snape boomed.

Eileen made him sit down.

"Belt up, Toby, or I'll hex you into next month!" she hissed.

Snape actually felt ill.

For the first time all day, he completely lost his appetite.

"Fucking hell!" he exclaimed.

Then, Dumbledore stood up.

"Hands up everyone who needs a fucking toot." Sirius said.

He got a big, nervous laugh.

"Attention everyone! Attention! Since all of our guests of honour are here, we can start the feast. And since we're all hungry, we'll hold off speeches until after dinner."

As Dumbledore sat down, food appeared on all the tables.

The sight of same made Snape feel better; he decided to eat now and worry later.

At the victors table, Snape, Ginny, Harry, Patfoot and Moony attacked the food with alacrity, piling their plates high.

"How can you lot eat after all that?" Lucius asked Snape.

"That's what I was thinking." Neville commented.

Everyone else got their food in turn, and Malfoy just had a glass of water.

He was looking a little green around the gills.

"After 12 years in Azkaban, I can eat anything, anytime. Cast iron stomach." Sirius said.

"I'm a werewolf." Lupin explained.

"I'm fucking starving." Snape volunteered.

"Me too. I'm always hungry. Ginny, pass the potatoes. Professor Snape, let me have the turkey platter when you've done. Are you going to eat all the rolls, Ron?" Harry asked.

Ron was trying to choke down a roll with butter, and Hermione was eating lightly.

Ron passed his roll to Harry.

"I'm waiting on dessert." Ron explained.

There was no way cake, cookies, or ice cream could turn his stomach.

"I'm a lioness animagus. The smell of blood makes me hungry. Here's the potatoes, Harry. I need more turkey." Ginny explained.

Snape didn't say anything else.

He was too busy stuffing his face.

"Well, Sev?" Malfoy asked.

"A little blood never bothered me, did it? Pass the turkey, Miss Weasley. Thank you."

Tobias Snape came over to his son's table, looking for thirds.

"That was better'n anything I ever seen on telly, Sev! Woh! It was fuckin' grisly!" Tobias enthused, as he sat down in a vacant chair, and began to load up his plate.

"When ye put that stake through his heart, it was like a fuckin' fountain! Alla that black nasty-lookin' blood, flyin' everywhere! Real horrorshow shit. I don't suppose I could get a video , could I? Pass the roast beef, Hermione." He continued.

Eileen came over to rein him in.

"Toby, not at table!. Luke, you look a right horrorshow. I think I have some Alka Seltzer in my purse. Works better than any potion." Eileen reminded him.

After Malfoy drank his Alka Seltzer, she convinced him to have a little soup.

As she took Tobias back to his table, Harry tugged on her sleeve.

"Don't sleep through my speech. I'm spilling the beans." He promised

After dinner there were speeches.

And speeches.

And speeches.

Speeches to the point where full and sleepy people dozed in their chairs.

But, when Harry got up to give a speech, everybody was alert.

It was after all, time to hear from The Boy Who Lived to Defeat Voldemort.

He got a standing ovation for five minutes just for walking up to the podium.

"Sorry to wake you all up. I was snoozing, meself. Erm, I'm not going to talk about meself, tonight. I've done enough of that at WAND. My name's Harry Potter and I;ve tooted this up me hooter, and shot up this and drank that, and beat this one up and went off with that one. I get tired of it, yunno? You all know my story. And everybody else involved has told you theirs. Some, and this means you, Hermione, at great length."

Harry paused for the laugh.

"She should have done it topless! Give us a look at those big ole titties!" somebody yelled.

Snape was on his feet with his wand out, scanning the crowd like a hawk.

"Fifteen points from Ravenclaw!" he announced as Hermione sat him down.

Harry waited for silence, and then began again.

"Tonight I'm going to tell you about another boy who lived. It's a really good story. Charles Dickens by way of William Burroughs, with a little Lovecraft thrown in for good measure. If you don't know who I'm talking about, visit the Muggle literature section of the Library. Anyway, our story begins in Liverpool, just before the Beatles made it big. If you don't know who the Beatles are, you must live under a rock."

Another laugh.

"A Scotsman from Glasgow, a Muggle and a sailor by trade, met and fell in love with a dark, willowy Liverpudlian witch from an old and well-respected family. But there was nothing old or well respected about the newlyweds. They were young, and very much in love, but they were both of them also very much insane."

Harry paused.

They audience was enraptured, and he saw Lucius Malfoy giving Professor Snape a dig to the ribs.

"When times were good for them, they were very good, and love and happiness abounded. But when times were bad, they were very bad. There were beatings and hexings and fighting and screaming. They were all alone in the world, living on the wrong side of town, on the other side of the tracks, down by the dirtiest part of the Mersey that rolled past their windows. Sometimes happy, sometimes blue, they were always drunk and never working, on the dole, on the fringes, and on the skids. And unto this star-crossed couple, a son was born."

Harry was really on a roll.

They were all hanging on his every word.

He took a sip of water, and brushed a stray hair out of his face.

"Their son grew up too fast, wading barefoot in dirty robes down the muddy banks of the Mersey. Fishing for garbage, looking for something to sell, something to do. He looked after himself and he couldn't remember a time when he hadn't. For the boy was subject to the life his parents lived by. And he got his share of the beatings and hexings and screamings and fightings, but far too little love and happiness. He came to Hogwarts at the age of ten with an old man's eyes and an old man's face. Because he already knew as many curses and hexes and potions and spells as the Head Boy and Girl, and he knew may things they didn't. He even had the scars to prove it. He knew how to drive a car, and hold down a job. He'd already had a woman; where he was from the kids just did what they saw their parents do. And he already knew the kind of solace you could get from a bottle; he'd been drinking since he was old enough to reach the tables where his parents left theirs. He knew that you kept your friends close and your enemies closer, and he looked on most of the kids in their nice robes with their good shoes and innocent eyes as strange creatures, from an alien world of clean shirts and regular mornings that he knew he could never belong to. But he had one friend. A little girl with ginger hair and violet eyes. And she had him. And that was good enough for both of them."

Harry looked over at his old man.

He had a sardonic smile on his face.

"Because this is a love story, witches and wizards, ladies and gentleman. Because this lad of ours, well he was a smart boy, and he tried to be good. And in gentler times maybe he could have. But when the ginger-haired girl he loved went with another man, and the hand of the Dark Lord beckoned, he fell into the abyss that seemed to be his destiny. And there he languished, his promise vanished, in dark years of drugs, of duels and street fights and barroom brawls, of casual shagging and drunkenness and dragon's fire. In black deeds and black magic, he bore his Dark Mark with pride. And the loss of his love ate him alive, inside."

Harry stopped to light a cigarette.

It seemed appropriate.

"But this is also a story of redemption. Because even though that ginger-haired girl loved another man, truly, madly and deeply, she still loved our hero. Loved him beyond all hope, and beyond all reason. And she vowed that if she had to go down to the depths of hell to reclaim him then she would. And when they were younger, in secret they used to lie side by side and he'd think of how much he loved her, there in the night. And as she led him out of Hell, well then, together in secret they were again."

"But the course of love and war never did run smooth. Because the ginger-haired girl and the man she loved got married. And soon after the ginger-haired girl took out hero as her second husband, because she loved him just as well. Soon enough, she had a baby. But that baby wasn't the child of the first man she married, but the second. The one she married in secret. The friend she'd saved, the man she'd loved since he was just a little boy. But he loved her, her first husband. He was a brave young man, good and strong and true. He loved her enough to accept the child of a man he hated, of an enemy, as his own, and to accept the enemy as a friend, and a brother. For all their sakes."

"For awhile then, it seemed that our hero's life might turn around. Because he wanted someday to be able to be a part of his son's life, to make the boy proud of all three of his parents. He had taken up WAND and put down the needle and the bottle forever. He got himself a job that held honour and prestige and he tried to make his mistakes right, and his marriage work, and make peace with his brother by law. But walking the upward path had never suited him. He became that greatest of assets to any war, a spy. He lied about his fealty in the Dark Lord's face, and Voldemort continued to think of him as The Heir. His Left Hand Man. He was wrong. Our hero was on our side all along."

People were starting to look at Snape.

The lights were coming on in their minds.

"But, in case you don't know, life can be a wretched old bitch. He tried to protect his ginger-haired girl, and his little son, and even his former enemy who turned out to be a good man, a brother, brave and strong and true. But not strong enough to withstand the wrath of Lord Voldemort. Who is and who can be, alone with a wand, and their two fists and two boots? But the ginger-haired girl's first husband died like a man. With his boots on. Protecting his wife and his son by law. He was a good man, brave and strong and true. I will always mourn his passing, and grieve for his loss. And the loss of the ginger-haired girl. She must have been a lot like another ginger-haired girl I know. With a heart of gold, and the soul of a Gryffindor lion."

Harry heard some sobbing in the room, and there were a lot of eyes welling up with tears.

Including his.

He had another drink of water, took a deeo breath, and steadied himself for the big finish.

This was his Da's Big Night, and he wasn't going to cock it up.

His Mum and Dad, they would have wanted it that way.

"And where was our hero, when his wife and his brother in law were being cruelly murdered? He was here, within these very walls when he learned that they were all dead, except for his boy. And the boy would have to be spirited away. Never to know his father's name. Doomed to a life of similar fame."

People were looking at Snape with utter disbelief.

He had a sort of wry smirk on his face.

"You'd think that would be enough to make the man give up. But not our hero. No he redoubled his efforts in his work. And when his son came to him, at last, hating him, he bore the lad's disgust for him in silence. It must have been like a knife in his heart, for his beloved son, all he had left of his beloved wife, to hate him so. But he never said a word. Because he was made of stern stuff, our hero. He did what the boy's dead parents could no longer do. What they would have expected him to do. He loved his son, and protected him, and tried to keep him safe from harm. At any cost. But it wasn't easy, because the darkness that enveloped the father reached out for the son. He was a good boy, brave and strong and true like the one of then men who was his father, but he fell into despair, and darkness, and drunkenness and addiction, just like our hero who was his father as well. And you'll forgoive me for saying so, but the son proved too, to be brave and strong. And true."

"And what did this wizard do for his son? For his ginger haired girl? For his students who feared him and for the Wizarding World who reviled him? He went into the devil's den when Voldemort called him. And he walked both sides of the line, by this time a master spy. He pulled his boy up out of the darkness he'd fallen into, and he marshalled an army of students who wanted to fight the Dark Lord. And even with the Dark Mark burning into his veins, he joined the Order of the Phoenix, and set his cap for war again."

Harry stopped to put out his cigarette.

"The man I speak of, in case you haven't guessed, is Potions Master, Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor, Master Spy, Head of Slytherin House, Member of the Order of the Phoenix and the secret General in Dumbledore's Army. I'm talking about the bravest man in the Wizarding World. You all may think I'm the Hero here, and sure I am, but I couldn't have done it without the wizard I'm proud to call my old man. He's the real Hero of this war. He's sacrificed more than anyone living has sacrificed, suffered more than anyone living has suffered, and this victory is not yours. And it's not mine. It's his. Stand up, Professor Snape. Take a fucking bow. Today is the day of your triumph, and your freedom, and nobody fucking well deserves it more than you. Ladies and gentlemen, witches and wizards, I give you, my father, Severus Snape."

You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

"Well, wasn't that a pisser? I see some of you don't believe me. You want proof? Well, I've got proof. Professor Dumbledore?"

Dumbledore stood up and pointed his wand at two yellowed documents on the table in front of him and then at the large empty wall in the Great Hall.

There, magnified to a huge size so everyone could see them was the marriage licence signed by Lily Potter and James Potter adopting Severus Snape as her second husband and James' brother by law.

Below it was Harry's birth certificate. It listed his name as Harry James Potter-Snape, and in the blanks under "father" Severus Snape's name appeared first beside the words "by blood" and James Potter's next to the words "by law and magical bond."

"I have kept the facts secret for almost twenty years to safeguard Harry's life. However, I myself, in my office, on December 8th, 1978, conducted the ceremony that made Severus Snape Lily Potter's second husband, and James Potter's brother by law. As you can see, Judge Black was the witness at that wedding, there is his signature. Similarly, there's my signature and Judge Black's as the witnesses on Harry's birth certificate. After Voldemort was defeated Lily, James and Severus had every intention of living together as a family with their son, Harry, and probably, more sons and daughters. Unfortunately for them, James and Lily had to give their lives, and Severus and Sirius their rights as Harry's father and godfather before their enemy met with his defeat. I hope now that my ward, my son by law and magical bond, Severus, and my grandson by same, Harry, can have many happy years together as a family, together with Eileen and Toby, and Aphrdite and Severus Sr., and make up for the time they have lost." Dumbledore announced.

Harry tried not to laugh.

Most every face he saw looked stunned.

The quiet in the hall was shattered by Snape's chair scraping back as he calmly took Harry's suggestion.

He stood up, straight and tall as he could, smirking imperiously, and looked at all the shocked faces.

Bending deeply at the waist, he took a formal bow.

Lucius and Draco Malfoy, the Snapes and Princes, Dumbledore, Remus Lupin, and all the Slytherins present, in addition to all of the Seven Guitar Wizards, stood up to applaud Snape.

Sibyl Trelawney got up to applaud Toby, and dragged Sirius with her.

Hermione was on her feet, too, clapping and looking about, defiantly.

Then, of all people, Neville Longbottom stood up, and started clapping, enthusiastically.

"Three cheers for Professor Snape! And for Harry, he's got a Dad after all!" Neville cried.

"Thank you, Longbottom. It's nice to be appreciated by someone who fears and reviles me the most." Snape quipped.

He was surprised that the rest of the room followed Longbottom to his feet, and applauded.

"Fuck me, a standing ovation." Snape marvelled, quietly.

Snape reached into the pocket of his robe, pulled out his packet of English Ovals, and lit one with the end of his wand.

He took a long drag, and exhaled slowly.

This was a moment he simply had to savour.

When everyone sat down and they were all looking at him, Snape realised he was expected to say something.

"Well, I suppose you all think I'm going to say something soppy. Forget it. To my students, in that we won't be having class for a fortnight, as Headmaster Dumbledore explained, your homework will not be due until then. I'll be in for my regular office hours tomorrow, but not after that. As I intend to take a holiday, meself, detentions are cancelled for the fortnight. But when classes recommence, so do detentions. Ten points to Gryffindor for Mr. Potter's heroics today. 20 points to Slytherin, as Mr. Malfoy and I are both members of that House. I would also like to assure you that I have showed Mr. Potter no favour in matters of grades or school discipline because of our family relationship, and I will continue to do so. To the rest of you, my thanks are in order for your gracious recognition. Whether or not you really mean it. I'm sure most of you still wouldn't want me over to tea, but it feels good to have me name cleared, at least. Thank you."

Snape lit a second cigarette on the end of the first.

He took the opportunity to laugh, derisively, at almost everyone in the Wizarding World.

This was, indeed, a fucking night to remember.

"Why do you all look so bloody surprised? What, Lily Evans, Mrs. James Potter, she was in love with that greasy, manky, snarky, filthy Scouser git Sev Snape? Well, you bet your shiny white arses and your toffee noses she was. Why, Ms. Granger, who, at 18 has a lot more on the ball than most of you lot, was just muttering that she had it figured out, as it's perfectly obvious to her that, among other rather glaring similarities, Mr. Potter looks like me. Harry, come and stand beside your Old Man."

"Righto, Da. But don't you think you should stop cursing everyone?"

"I've earned the right to. Come on, lad."

Harry came down from the podium, lighting himself a fresh fag.

Snape reached into his other pocket, took out his "reading glasses" and put them on.

They both stood there, and smoked.

"Go on, Da. Go up to the podium and tell them exactly what we think of the lot of 'em." Harry whispered.

"Not for free, Harry. Wait for the book deals. And the lecture circuit. This lot will pay us to abuse, revile and crucify them. Why should we do it for free?" Snape whispered back.

A murmur of shock went through the room.

"Questions?" Snape asked, brusquely.

"Yes. When's dessert?" Fred Weasley yelled, from somewhere.

"An excellent question Mr. Weasley. One I shall yield to the Headmaster."

Snape and Harry both took their seats and Snape put his glasses away.

"Well, since our speeches are completed, I believe we can have our dessert now." Dumbledore announced.

Dessert suddenly appeared, and just in the nick of time.

Everyone attacked dessert with alacrity.

"I knew it." Remus Lupin crowed.

Tonks chuckled.

"You did not, Remus. You suspected, that's all. Now me, I knew. It'd be more than my job's worth, not figuring oiut something as obvious as that." She corrected him

"Well, I've known all along. James and Lily were my best friends. I'm Harry's godfather, and I was their Secret Keeper." Sirius replied.

"What about you, Malfoy?" Remus asked.

"I had no idea Sev was married to the Potters. But I had my suspicions. They look alike. I've always thought that was obvious. More obvious the older Mr. Potter gets. I admit, Harry looks more like Lily Evans. However, when Mr _Potter-Snape_ was in his second year, and he pulled that dirty trick with my sock, losing me my house elf, I knew I had to watch my arse, for I was sure that was I dealing with the son of Severus Snape." Lucuis replied.

Remus Lupin laughed.

"A very Snape manouver." He agreed,

"That was a real dirty fucking trick on my part." Harry chuckled.

"I can't believe nobody else noticed that they look alike." Hermione commented.

"They smell the same. I'm not surprised. I really did know all along. " Ginny expressed.

"Blimey. It's just like Star Wars." Ron exclaimed!

"That's wot I was thinking!" Neville agreed.

"Mr. Weasley, Mr. Longbottom, are you comparing me favourably with Darth Vader?" Snape inquired.

Neville dropped his fork.

"Don't bully them, Snape! You wore that "Come To the Dark Side" shirt with Darth Vader's picture on it all through seventh year. He was your fucking hero." Sirius reminded him.

"True. I still say Vader has more class than Luke Skywalker." Snape argued.

"Luke was kind of a git. I liked Chewbacca best. Her reminds me of me." Ron commented.

"I rather liked Obi Wan." Hermione ventured.

"You would." Harry muttered.

"Well Harry and I are partial to Han Solo, aren't we Harry?" Sirius announced.

"That's right, Sirius. Force, schmorce. Give me a good blaster any day of the week. I mean it was planning and fighting and a sword, that killed Voldemort, not a lot of mumbling and prophecy." Harry agreed.

"Without mumbling and prophecy, you wouldn't have got very far, Harry." Professor Trelawney reminded them.

"Do your Vader impression, Snape. Come on. Do it for the kids." Sirius encouraged him.

"No."

"But you do it perfectly. Just imagine how frightened they'll be of you after that."

Snape turned a pitiless black-eyed gaze on his pupils, Harry in particular.

"Luke, I am your father." He intoned.

Neville dropped his fork again.

"Blimey." He gasped.

"Oooo, that's bloody lifelike." Ron breathed.

"Nooooooooooo!" Harry cried.

He and Snape both laughed.

"You've been waiting for that for months, haven't you Harry?' he asked.

"That was fucking brilliant." Harry enthused.

Everybody laughed.

Harry turned to Hermione.

"Did that make you wet your knickers?" he whispered in her ear.

Hermione stomped on his foot.

"Shut up, you cunt!" she hissed back.

Harry laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

He reached into his pocket for his packet of fags, and found he was out.

"That's a whole pack you owe me, by now, Harry." Snape said, handing one down the table.

"Sue me." Harry said, and lit up.

He put his arm around Ginny and as nobody was looking, slipped his hand down the front of her robe.

She moved her leg over closer to his.

Life was good.

Very, very good.

_(Author's Note: No, we're not done, we're not to the end of the year yet! We still have to find out who was trying to poison Harry. And now that the war is over, how will father and son, and the rest of the warriors deal with the peace? And the new Druid in Hogsmeade Abbey? The worst, or the best, may be yet to come. And if you like my writing style and you dig comics too, be sure to check out my the Joke's On Me series under Comics-Watchmen-Comedian. Iron Man fans who didn't have enough of Tony Stark in Iron Man too might like the Blue Light Special Series in Comics-Ironman- Tony S. and P. Potts. And there's a new story up about what on earth is going on with Sirius Black and Sibyl Trelawney, Only Skin Deep, under Books-Harry Potter-Sirius B. . For you Snape/Hermione fans, there will soon be an update to After the Fire under Books-Harry Potter-Severus S. & Hermione G. Thanks for reading!)_


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